Documentation for miniconfig.
Signed-off-by: Rob Landley <[email protected]>
diff -ur linux-2.6.17.1/Documentation/kbuild/00-INDEX linux-2.6.17.new/Documentation/kbuild/00-INDEX
--- linux-2.6.17.1/Documentation/kbuild/00-INDEX 2006-06-20 05:31:55.000000000 -0400
+++ linux-2.6.17.new/Documentation/kbuild/00-INDEX 2006-07-06 13:50:35.000000000 -0400
@@ -4,5 +4,7 @@
- specification of Config Language, the language in Kconfig files
makefiles.txt
- developer information for linux kernel makefiles
+miniconfig.txt
+ - how to use miniature configuration files.
modules.txt
- how to build modules and to install them
diff -ur linux-2.6.17.1/Documentation/kbuild/miniconfig.txt linux-2.6.17.new/Documentation/kbuild/miniconfig.txt
--- linux-2.6.17.1/Documentation/kbuild/miniconfig.txt 2006-07-06 16:37:21.000000000 -0400
+++ linux-2.6.17.new/Documentation/kbuild/miniconfig.txt 2006-07-06 13:50:57.000000000 -0400
@@ -0,0 +1,103 @@
+Miniconfig documentation
+June 19, 2006
+Rob Landley <[email protected]>
+=============================
+
+What is a miniconfig?
+---------------------
+
+Current Linux kernels support miniature configuration files, listing just
+the symbols you want to enable and letting the configurator enable any
+dependencies needed to give you a valid configuration.
+
+The "make miniconfig" command will expand a mini.config file into a full-sized
+.config for use by the build process. By default this expects to read
+configuration data from "mini.config" in the current directory. Add the
+argument "MINICONFIG=/path/to/filename" to specify a different file. Either
+way, it creates a new ".config" file.
+
+Advantages of miniconfig:
+-------------------------
+
+Miniconfigs have several advantages over conventional configuration files:
+
+ * They're more portable between versions. A miniconfig from linux 2.6.15 will
+ most likely build an equivalent 2.6.18 kernel.
+
+ * It's easy to see exactly what features have been specified.
+
+ * Miniconfigs are human editable, human readable, and provide informative
+ error messages identifying any unrecognized (typoed) symbols.
+
+Creating a mini.config automatically:
+-------------------------------------
+
+Configure your kernel as usual, then run "scripts/shrinkconfig filename"
+to create a new miniconfig file (called "filename") from that .config file.
+
+This will take a long time; the current script reloads the config file once
+for each line in the file to determine if that line is needed in the resulting
+output.
+
+To specify an architecture other than x86, set the ARCH environment variable
+before running the script, ala:
+
+ ARCH=arm script/shrinkconfig mini.config
+
+Creating a mini.config by hand:
+-------------------------------
+
+Open your favorite text editor starting with a blank file, and also open a
+command line window. At the command line run "make allnoconfig" followed by
+"make menuconfig". Go through menuconfig enabling each feature you want, and
+for each feature you enable look at the help entry to find the symbol name for
+that feature, and add a line to mini.config setting that symbol to the
+appropriate value, such as:
+
+ CONFIG_THINGY=y
+
+When you've got your list of symbols, save the file and run "make miniconfig"
+on it to make sure you get the results you want.
+
+Real-world example:
+-------------------
+
+Here's the mini.config I use to build User Mode Linux:
+
+ CONFIG_MODE_SKAS=y
+ CONFIG_BINFMT_ELF=y
+ CONFIG_HOSTFS=y
+ CONFIG_SYSCTL=y
+ CONFIG_STDERR_CONSOLE=y
+ CONFIG_UNIX98_PTYS=y
+ CONFIG_BLK_DEV_LOOP=y
+ CONFIG_BLK_DEV_UBD=y
+ CONFIG_TMPFS=y
+ CONFIG_SWAP=y
+ CONFIG_LBD=y
+ CONFIG_EXT2_FS=y
+ CONFIG_PROC_FS=y
+
+And here's how I build and test it (as a normal user, not as root):
+
+# Configure, building in an external directory and using a mini.config file in
+# my home directory.
+
+ make miniconfig MINICONFIG=~/uml-config ARCH=um O=../linux-umlbuild
+
+# change to build directory and build User Mode Linux
+
+ cd ../linux-umlbuild
+ make ARCH=um
+
+# Test run
+
+ ./linux rootfstype=hostfs rw init=/bin/sh
+ $ whoami
+ $ mount -t proc /proc /proc
+ $ cat /proc/cpuinfo
+ $ halt -f
+
+# And if I want to regenerate the mini.config from the .config, I do this.
+
+ ARCH=um scripts/shrinkconfig uml-config
--
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