On Fri, Mar 08, 2019 at 02:57:24PM +0100, Enrico Weigelt, metux IT consult wrote:
On 08.03.19 14:42, Joel Fernandes wrote:
Hi folks,
That sounds like it could be useful. I don't see any reason off the top why that would not be possible to add to the list of archived files in the future. The patch allows populating the list of files from Kbuild using ikh_file_list variable.
It seems the whole thing's going into a direction where a whole own subtopic is coming up: compressed built-in filesystem.
Haven't had a deeper thought about it yet, whether or not existing filesystems like squashfs, initramfs, etc are the right thing for that, or something new should be invented, but a generic mechanism for compiled-in compressed (ro) filesystems could also be interesting for very small devices, that perhaps even dont need any persistence.
Some requirements coming up in mind:
- it shall be possible to have any number of instances - possibly by separate modules.
- it shall be possible to use an bootloader/firmware provided image (so it can serve as initrd)
- data should stay compressed as long as possible, but uncompressed data might be cached - do decompression on-demand
- only needs to be ro (write access could be done via unionfs+friends)
- it shall be swappable (if swap is enabled)
In that scenario, these in-kernel headers would just one consumer, I can imagine lots of others.
I too want a pony :)
Until then, I think this feature should not be bikeshedded to death. It fits a real need, is simple (modulo the Kbuild interactions), and is optional for those that do not wish to waste the memory.
thanks,
greg k-h