From: Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de>
To: Olof Johansson <olof@lixom.net>
Cc: Bartlomiej Zolnierkiewicz <b.zolnierkie@samsung.com>,
        "linux-arm-kernel@lists.infradead.org" 
        <linux-arm-kernel@lists.infradead.org>,
        "linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org" <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
        Russell King <linux@arm.linux.org.uk>,
        Laura Abbott <laura@labbott.name>
Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH 00/23] arm: defconfigs: use kconfig fragments
Date: Wed, 07 Dec 2016 22:35:42 +0100
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On Wednesday, December 7, 2016 1:14:02 PM CET Olof Johansson wrote:
> >
> > - A "debug" fragment would be nice, to turn on common options that
> >   add a lot of useful runtime checks at the expense of performance
> >   or code size.
> 
> Hmm, some of these might work but several useful debug options (in
> particular DEBUG_LL for early errors) are per-system/platform.

I was thinking mostly of architecture-independent options, i.e.
the stuff that is in lib/Kconfig.debug but isn't too expensive
to be run in a regular test environment. Enabling those
for a build/boot automation environment would be particularly
useful as you'd catch more bugs that get introduced through
a random patch.

> > - A "distro" fragment that turns on all loadable modules that are
> >   enabled by common distributions (e.g. two or more of
> >   debian/fedora/opensuse/gentoo), to let you build a drop-in
> >   replacement kernel for a shipping distro. This would also allow
> >   the distros to strip their own config files and just specify
> >   whatever differs from the others.
> 
> Keeping this in sync with the distro kernel could be a bit awkward
> (and possibly churny).

It would certainly need buy-in from distro maintainers. I've discussed
this with Laura Abbott in the past, and she was interested in
principle.

	Arnd