[Buildroot] [PATCH 0/2] intro

Thomas De Schampheleire patrickdepinguin+buildroot at gmail.com
Fri Nov 18 09:38:03 UTC 2011


On Fri, Nov 18, 2011 at 12:36 AM, Arnout Vandecappelle <arnout at mind.be> wrote:
>  Hoi,
>
>  I'm not very enthousiastic about either of these two features.
>
> On Thursday 17 November 2011 14:18:07 Konrad Eisele wrote:
>> The aim of patch-1 is to make it possible to have configuration subtrees.
>> This makes it possible to have a structure like this:
>>
>> buildroot-kconfigs
>> + linux-kconfigs
>> + busybox-kconfigs
>> + uclibc-kconfigs
>> + crosstools-kconfigs
>>
>> Where all configuration appear in one xconfig screen. Currently I have focues on
>> qconfig only, I think however adding support for gconfig and mconfig is possible
>> easily. The subtree feature is enabled with the -s option to qconfig: "qconfig -s <kconf>"
>
> - The subtree that has to be included depends on your buildroot configuration.
> So you have to include all possible linux, busybox, uclibc, ... configs and
> protect them with IFs.  I can hardly imagine that Kconfig can deal with such
> huge configurations.
>
> - I don't like the size explosion of the buildroot tree that we would see
> if all these configs are included.
>
> - The packages which have kconfigs are the ones that are most likely to need
> board-specific modifications, which may define additional config options.  This
> means that copying the config tree into buildroot isn't going to cut it.
>
> - Running configs for these things is a bit of an expert step.  In particular
> because the configs have to be post-processed by buildroot and because
> you have to save them explicitly afterwards in a place different from the
> output directory.  I think that part should be smoothed out first.  Until
> then, I consider it a good thing that the normal user runs 'make xconfig'
> while the expert user runs 'make {,linux-,busybox-}menuconfig'.
>
> - I don't know what it will look like visually because the patch failed to
> compile for me (current_conf_level is undefined), but I wonder if there is a
> significant advantage compared to just menus.  At least in menuconfig
> it wouldn't really make a difference.
>
>
>> The other feature that patch-1 adds is a config-entry type "execute: It is
>> like a string, however when doubleclicking (trying to edit) in qconfig
>> (only in qconfig currently) then the string is executed using "system(<str>)".
>> The goal is to be able to execute "make" from inside the gui, without having
>> to exit.
>
>  Here I simply don't see the benefit.  Whatever needs to be executed there
> can just be done with the normal make after the config finishes.  If people
> want to push a button to run make, give them Eclipse with a buildroot
> plugin :-)
>

In fact, similar features (e.g. including one menuconfig into another)
were discussed in the context of crosstool-ng integration into
buildroot. See the thread "Report from the Buildroot Developer Day"
and Yann's comments on it.


Best regards,
Thomas



More information about the buildroot mailing list