Re: CVS commit: src

[nia <nia%NetBSD.org@localhost>]

On Sun, May 29, 2022 at 09:34:16AM +0200, Frank Kardel wrote:
> Hi *!
> 
> I see we are building knobs to not build and install parts of the system.
> Somehow I missed the discussion on this. Could someone point me to that
> thread, so that I can understand the overall rationale?
> 
> As for NTP: sysinst is configuring for ntp and ntpdate. How is sysinst
> supposed to handle a potentially missing NTP installation?
> 
> Frank


Hi, sorry I missed this email, please CC me next time.

I talked about this a bit on ICB, but not on the lists yet.

My end-game is to make it easier to make minimal embedded
images of NetBSD.

At work we are shipping an embedded OS derived from FreeBSD,
with some patches and custom tools, and also "incredibly stripped down"
with many knobs similar to this.  It's extremely useful to exclude
some non-essential components from the build without modifying the
build system.

As for why I want to do this to NetBSD, I had the idea of making a
small-as-possible live image with GUI similar to Damn Small Linux. 

This is obviously focused on live and embedded images, so nothing
using sysinst. It might be not too intrusive to conditionally enable
some options in sysinst, though.

There is a secondary goal, to identify groups of commands that are
related. When all you have is a big unstructured list of commands,
it's difficult to tell that everything configured with MKMROUTING
is enabled, or that it's related to the the kernel option MKROUTING.

I don't intend to make it possible to remove components of NetBSD
that constitute some form of "API", whether that be in shell scripts
or otherwise, for compatibility's sake. The exception might be BIND
since it's quite large and people have concerns about both the
codebase and the license.  I also do not intend to make it possible
to build NetBSD without any components mandated by POSIX.

I hope this answer is satisfactory.