Subject: bug#55909: Converging aux-files/linux-libre/* towards mainline defconfigs

From: Richard Sent <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 23 May 2024 15:03:44 -0400

I would be in favor of building more initrd modules into the kernel when
done so upstream. To my understanding the distinction between
linux-libre and linux-libre-*-generic is to have both:

a) A kernel with options that support the various Guix services OOTB,
such as CONFIG_BINFMT_MISC and qemu-binfmt-service-type.

b) A kernel that matches upstream defconfigs as much as possible, with
the exception of a subset of flags considered essential. See
%default-extra-linux-options or linux-libre-riscv64-generic.

With this model, linux-libre should avoid diverging from upstream
defconfigs whenever possible, particularly when toggling a module from y
to m. linux-libre would become a superset of *-generic kernels.

Obviously I'm not packaging linux-libre myself. I might misunderstand
the purpose of these variants. :)

On a related note, the *-generic kernels seem to also have encapsulated
"add support for a specific board on this platform", which to me feels a
bit like a hacky solution. See linux-libre-arm64-generic and the
Pinebook Pro comments. I'd think that would belong in a
linux-libre-pinebook-pro or similar.

-- 
Take it easy,
Richard Sent
Making my computer weirder one commit at a time.