The Linux kernel uses kconfig to allow you to configure the kernel. kconfig implements a variability modeling language. You can adapt kconfig to enable you configure other software projects. Over time, Linux kconfig has become one of the leading industrial variability modeling languages (Formal Semantics of the Kconfig Language, A Study of Variability Models and Languages in the Systems Software Domain)
What is often difficult to do though is to start off using kconfig though and integration into a project. Or updating / syncing to the latest kconfig from upstream Linux. This project is a passive fork of Linux kconfig which aims to keep in sync with the Linux kernel's latest kconfig to allow projects to easily adapt and embrace Linux kconfig for their own project.
The goal is not to fork kconfig and evolve it separately. The goal is to keep this fork in sync with the evolution of kconfig on Linux to make it easier for projects to use kconfig and also update their own kconfig when needed.
Since we take code from Linux we respect its license and embrace the GPLv2 for this project as well. We copy / embrace the SPDX license conventions as well. If you decide to use other licenses, for other files in your own project be sure to copy the respective licenses from upstream Linux.
We embraced and use the Linux DCO, be sure to Sign-off-by your patches. For details refer to the CONTRIBUTING file.
You can send patches to help make adjustments / keep things in sync. Helping make the build process easier to expand, for instance the subdirectory automatic traversing is welcome.
Additionally since kconfig could use more documentation, I would accept patches to help start documenting different components not yet documented with the compromise that the goal is to eventually get this upstream.
You can send patches to:
mcgrof@kernel.org
It is not a requirement to follow a versioning scheme as used in the Linux kernel to be able to use kconfig. However this project embraces it to help projects also pick such practice up if so desired. The main version if kept as variables on the top level Makefile and an extra appended version string is supplied if the tree is dirty, this is implemented with scripts/kconfig/setlocalversion.
This fork follows the practive of using $obj-y targets for build targets,
however its solution is much simpler than the one in the kernel. It does not
traverse subdirectories either. Its a simple solution to at least help you
devise your own solutions for more complex builds.
- Make subdirectory traversing easier and automatic.
This documentation tracks linux-next, as such go clone it if you want to embrace kconfig.
The latest sync happened using linux-next tag:
next-20181002
Documentation for kconfig is upstream on Linux, so use and refer to that, be sure to read this and the current limitations noted there in.
If you run make menuconfig once, it will save the results into the files:
- .config
- include/generated/autoconf.h
If you run make menuconfig a second time, only .config will be updated.
This could either be a bug or a feature upstream. In any case, if you want
to regenerate include/generated/autoconf.h based on new results you should
be sure to run make mrproper prior to running make menuconfig.