Portable and reproducible kernel builds with TuxMake

Posted Jan 5, 2021 23:19 UTC (Tue) by unixbhaskar (guest, #44758)
Parent article: Portable and reproducible kernel builds with TuxMake

Nope, I would prefer to do all the things by hand , then doing the important part decided by some thrid party program .

Plus bending it makes thing even more complex and no point . Flooded with assumption.

But having said that, it must be good excercise by the authors to enahance their understanding of kernel.

Why make simple thing more comlicated???? When things can be done in 3 steps...why brings all those fuzzz???

YMMV

Portable and reproducible kernel builds with TuxMake

Posted Jan 6, 2021 0:00 UTC (Wed) by ttuttle (subscriber, #51118) [Link] (4 responses)

The simplicity you cite is deceptive: it's simple to build a kernel in your own workspace, but it's not simple to build one in an identical workspace to a colleague's, or to the one in a continuous instrumentation system, or to the one used in a larger build system.

If you're only building for yourself, TuxMake may in fact be overkill. But if you're working as part of a larger system and may need to reproduce other builds or have others reproduce yours, it's a way to simplify identifying and sharing those environmental dependencies.

Portable and reproducible kernel builds with TuxMake

Posted Jan 6, 2021 3:19 UTC (Wed) by unixbhaskar (guest, #44758) [Link] (3 responses)

Okay, IIRC , if my faint memory serves well, don't we have a "reproducible thing" for the kernel???? Wondering....

Probably ,somebody more aware can confirm that. Anyway, It is always a temptation ,when you build something and and think it is "absolutely required" to do better job.

"Large environment" is garbage.

YMMV and I am sure I am telling from my small/little and importantly very limited experiance(NO PUN INTENDED) , you might have more exposure to conclude on that.

Okay, This tool might a boon for some...not a generalised one.As you have rightly pointed out. So, it might missed few "mundane" and "ordinary" user who are fond of building stuff.

Sincerely, I have no objection , just express my views, am I not suppose to do so???

Portable and reproducible kernel builds with TuxMake

Posted Jan 6, 2021 9:13 UTC (Wed) by Sesse (subscriber, #53779) [Link]

> Sincerely, I have no objection , just express my views, am I not suppose to do so???

Only if those views are useful in some way, really.

Portable and reproducible kernel builds with TuxMake

Posted Jan 6, 2021 11:13 UTC (Wed) by k3ninho (subscriber, #50375) [Link]

You're very welcome to your opinion. You're wrong, though, in light of the community you're (inadvertently) part of. Please, express your opinion and your assumptions and the context in which you've developed those views. But along with that, expect that people will (courteously and respectfully) correct the misapprehensions you've absorbed.

The thing that made Linux the success it is is entirely its community. People got together to add features and share-back the code they changed. Patches need the transitivity of 'your code + my changes' in either your build system or my build system to arrive at similar-enough program binaries that my claims to make something better in my built edition of the program are actually making the program better in your built edition of the program.

Seems easy when it works. It's a massive pain when it goes wrong and you've moved so fast breaking things that you can't quite understand which small change caused a chain of breakage.

Reproducible builds and a reference-type build environment might be monocultural and eventually a weak spot. For now there's gains in assembling and maintaining this suite -- and look at Linaro as an organisation empowering small-board and industrial-computing builders to target esoteric and exotic devices: it's hard to standardise the wide swathe of 'get it working, ship the product and move on' hacking for these devices, but this helps.

Dont forget it's a team game,
K3n.

Portable and reproducible kernel builds with TuxMake

Posted Jan 8, 2021 1:22 UTC (Fri) by mcon147 (subscriber, #56569) [Link]

Using repeated "??" and ".." and chains of capital letter words should be treated with some caution

Portable and reproducible kernel builds with TuxMake

Posted Jan 6, 2021 1:10 UTC (Wed) by sashal (✭ supporter ✭, #81842) [Link] (3 responses)

I too prefer indexing my own versions of files rather than use some third party program like Git!

At least Linus got a good exercise to enhance his understanding of SCMs...

But seriously, doing it "by hand" works fine if it's just your own kernel, but its far more complex to build kernels for multiple architectures and config files, or being able to quickly build a kernel that a user point out. I don't want to maintain toolchains, I just want to get my kernel work done.

Portable and reproducible kernel builds with TuxMake

Posted Jan 6, 2021 3:08 UTC (Wed) by unixbhaskar (guest, #44758) [Link] (2 responses)

Sasha, "by hand" means I have my frivilious automated tool, which does the job for me. And doing thing for a team, I believe not every on involed int he kernel building stage?? At least I am not aware of it.

A single person build the kernel, whether it's in team environment or for indidual need.

Flame, if I read between the lines. Oh, btw , I would like maintain a toolchain of my own which match the expectation of kernel....well, now brain ring a alerm bell and you frown, probably justified ...that's the way I do .

That is not efficent , you might opined ...but it's okay ...whatever I have read in the article looks not so straight forward and laden with assumptions.

Well, I probably grossly wrong....

Portable and reproducible kernel builds with TuxMake

Posted Jan 6, 2021 3:25 UTC (Wed) by unixbhaskar (guest, #44758) [Link]

Okay, if you prefer, curse me for the "misnomer" ...I am bugged by that ,being in the specific industry and seeing it's been practiced everywhere and importantly everyone(smart people too!) , so laser mortals like me , also get injected with the bad idea.

:) Teach me/correct me/show me ...I believe I have "growth mindset" and not stubbornly cling on something for the sake statisfy my stupid ego(yes I have, probably other don't have that....he he he he h...probably others control better) ...

Portable and reproducible kernel builds with TuxMake

Posted Jan 7, 2021 18:01 UTC (Thu) by jezuch (subscriber, #52988) [Link]

So you wrote your own scripts to build the kernel. So what's wrong with someone else writing their own scripts to build the kernel? :)