Messages in this thread | | | Date | Sun, 14 Mar 2004 01:32:20 +0100 | From | Adrian Bunk <> | Subject | Re: Bloat report 2.6.3 -> 2.6.4 |
| |
On Sat, Mar 13, 2004 at 05:59:40PM -0600, Matt Mackall wrote: > On Sat, Mar 13, 2004 at 06:57:13PM +0100, Adrian Bunk wrote: >... > > > But I think it's fair to say that new features that are on by default > > > are in fact bloat in some sense. > > > > Perhaps in some sense, but not in any interesting sense. > > > > For the average computer you can buy at your supermarket today it isn't > > very interesting whether the kernel is bigger by 1 MB or not. > > > > People who need to care about the size of the kernel [1] use hand-tuned > > .config's that are far away from defconfig - and those people wouldn't > > enable unneeded features that are on by default. > > And my coverage of creep in other _commonly used_ parts of the kernel > would then be nil. Given that allyesconfig can't be expected to build > a kernel on any given day, defconfig is the least arbitrary and most > useful of arbitrary choices. > > > You use a metric "size increase of a defconfig kernel [2]", and I simply > > claim that this metric doesn't measure anything useful for practical > > purposes. > > defconfig is not an unreasonable approximation of features people use.
What exactly is your goal?
As already said: *** For the average user, the size of the kernel doesn't matter *** [1] *** People that care about size don't use defconfig ***
> If something is added to defconfig, odds are that people will start > using it. Not perfect, obviously, but I've yet to see anyone suggest > anything else that actually provides some coverage.
Did you ever consider that your approach of an "automated scheme" might be an approach of very limited value?
cu Adrian
[1] OK, 10 MB more would matter, but we are more in the ranges of perhaps a few hundreds kB
--
"Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days. "Only a promise," Lao Er said. Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed
- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
| |