[gentoo-genkernel] Genkernel and Dracut integration

[Amadeusz Żołnowski]

Hello,

I have a bit more brain resources to continue the integration of Dracut
with Genkernel, at last.  Dracut was meant to replace internal Genkernel
initramfs generator, but recently Genkernel is being developed quite
actively, therefore I think it would be a waste to just replace it.
Both can coexist.  Although there are a lot of differences between
Genkernel and Dracut, therefore there's no much sense to continue the
integration the way I have started.  I have tried to replace initramfs
generator transparently, translating command line options and
configuration to Dracut options, to be fully compatible.  Quickly it has
become a burden, because Genkernel code has to be updated according to
changes in Dracut.  Just imagine you would have to update Genkernel for
every kernel release.

I propose to extract the initramfs generator from Genkernel and make it
a standalone project.  The rest of the Genkernel could be rewritten to
support both Gentoo's initramfs generator, Dracut and maybe some other
in the future.  Of course this would be my job to do so and I'm only
asking for acceptance from you.

Another problem arisen is the name and versioning.  Solutions:

1) The framework integrating old Genkernel and Dracut could be just
bumped to:

  a) 4 - because there's no official 4.x release,
  b) 5 - because there's an unofficial and dead 4.x:
         https://github.com/eedgar/genkernel4

2) The framework could be named genboot, because it actually takes care
of kernel, initramfs and boot manager entries.  Although we're losing
old good name.

I am definitely for (1).  The extracted old internal Genkernel initramfs
generator would need to be named differently for either case, for
example: geninitrd, geninitramfs, genifs, genird or geninitfs.


-- 
Amadeusz Żołnowski