CML2 Coming in Kernel 2.5

MrHat writes: "Eric S. Raymond's CML2, or 'Configuration Menu Language' -- part of the next-generation Linux kernel build system -- is now officially ready for 2.5. CML2 includes a compiler for a domain-specific configuration language, used to configure kernel subsystems and resolve dependencies between them. CML2 and Linux 2.5 will 'ship' with several different configuration interfaces, including an adventure game, whipped up by ESR during an extended flight. The story from the horse's mouth (or LKML, if you prefer):'This release resolves all known logic bugs and rulebase problems. The only things left on the to-do list are convenience features and some minor improvements in the test/coverage tools. This code is now officially ready for the 2.5 fork.'"

Re:why no LL1 talk?

[nvainio]

Well, many want him to speak in their conference or similar and he's travelling quite a lot. I think it's just fair that he wants good sleep and proper food. See esr's travelling rules [tuxedo.org]. Calendar [tuxedo.org] is also available.

Re:A promising step

[rhekman]

For those of us more experienced at building kernels, there is another project that is looking to make building kernels much better. That is Keith Owens' new kbuild architecture. He has rewritten the makefiles to make readability better, put compile time dependency checking in the right place, and make creating patches easier. It will work wonderfully with ESR's system and have the effect of making repeated compiles much faster. Anyway, I can't wait.

http://kbuild.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]

Regards

Re:What's wrong with xconfig?

[MSG]

I know, I know.... "Don't moderate, reply."

The CML project got started when kernel developers started complaining about how hard it was to maintain the current configuration tool.

The current configuration tool *is* CML. The tool that ESR has produced is CML2. CML does its work with a mix of shell, perl, other tools. It's nasty. CML2 is pure Python.

That obviously hasn't happened yet, but mostly only because Eric decided to implement CML in Python

No, it hasn't happened yet because it's not material for a *stable* kernel series. It'll go into the development kernel, and all of the stuff that needs to be updated to make it work will get updated in the devel tree.

because it wasn't GPL compatibly licensed

Python has had a few releases that the FSF thought were not compliant, but Guido and co. thought that they were. Python has always tried to be GPL compatible. 1.5.2 and lesser are compatible, and so are all of the current newer branches of Python.

Anyway, the idea was not so much to improve on xconfig, but to give you the ability to continue configuring your kernel once xconfig was no longer being maintained.

The idea was to create a uniform set of configuration tools that got dependancy checking right and were easy to maintain. CML was none of those things.