Re: [gentoo-soc] Application for Google Summer of Code 2018-Mishal Roy

[Rich Freeman]

On Thu, Mar 22, 2018 at 12:07 AM, Benda Xu <heroxbd@g.o> wrote:
>
>> builds x86 linux kernel from source code present in /usr/src/linux
>> directory of Gentoo liveDVD
>
> This is not how Gentoo ebuild works, the build should prepare the source
> code.
>

I don't want to derail whatever your goals are here, but IMO an ebuild
that actually builds a kernel would be useful.

However, such an ebuild shouldn't touch /usr/src.  If I were doing a
kernel build ebuild I'd have it fetch kernel sources like any other
package, then build it in the normal location, with configuration
options provided via USE flags or some default config, and then
install the final kernel in /boot.

I realize that isn't how Gentoo has done it for the last 20 years, but
I've always thought that it would make sense to have a way to actually
maintain up-do-date kernels in the same manner as any other package,
with the /usr/src approach being an also-supported alternative.

That said, there are complications.  Some kernel modules want prepared
(or even built) sources and this approach would clean those after
install.  Also, we'd probably need to use subslots for initramfs
rebuilds or something like that.  I suspect this is why it hasn't been
done yet.

Again, I don't want to derail SoC with this unless there was an intent
to actually build a kernel this way...

-- 
Rich