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New Linux Configuration Tool
paul.dunne writes "Looks like we are finally well on the way to getting a
replacement for the old Linux configuration tools. Details in a
thread on the linux-kernel mailing list. Basically, Linus
likes it; it's written in C, so there are no "language issues"; and
feedback on the mailing list so far seems positive and constructive."
This is about how the linux kernel is configured and built. At the moment there are a mess of makefiles and shell scripts that provide make oldconfig/config/menuconfig/xconfig etc.
LKC is a new configuration file format/language for describing how the configurations options interelate and which are set, and a parser for this language that interfaces with the build system and tells it how to build your kernel. See this if you're interested.
This is all probably A Good Thing (it should make maintaining the the build system easier), but people who don't maintain linux makefiles probably won't find this the world's most fascinating feature. make menuconfig still does basically the same thing. Your .config files in 2.6.x/3.0.x will be in a different format to those from 2.4.x if you look. That's about it.
Not that I really want to get the whole GNU/Linux debate and flame war going, but Linux is just a kernel, so technically the title is correct. I Linux configuration tool can't really be much more than a kernel configuration tool.
As far as needing a new tool goes, I really don't see the need. make menuconfig works great for me, but there might be some underlying problems when adding new functinality to the kernel and whatnot. Having it detect my hardware and build a static kernel with no modules would be pretty damn cool.
may be found here.
-rimdo
There's nothing wrong with "make menuconfig". I find it actually better to navigate then "make xconfig".
The problem is that "make config", "make menuconfig" and "make xconfig" each use different methods. Roman Zippel now made a seperate backend and frontend. There's one backend, and there can be several frontends, like "make config", "make menuconfig" and "make xconfig".
The new xconfig uses Qt, but there could just as wel be a Gtk+ frontend, or a Tcl/Tk (ugh) frontend.
But from what I read, it seems that the frontend needs to go with the kernel itself. I hope I picked that up wrong, and that it is possible to use a xconfig (Qt) frontend with different kernel versions. That way the backend, and the 2 console frontends can ship with the kernel, and the gui frontends can be shipped by the distributors.
Well, don't worry about that. We can get you back before you leave. (Dr. Who)
You can find some screenshots at KernelTrap: http://kerneltrap.org/node.php?id=404