Re: evbarm build using exorbitant disk space during build

[Matt Thomas <matt%3am-software.com@localhost>]

On Apr 30, 2014, at 3:59 AM, Martin Husemann <martin%duskware.de@localhost> 
wrote:

> On Wed, Apr 30, 2014 at 11:37:55AM +0100, David Brownlee wrote:
>> Possibly dumb idea - How about a tool to plug a ramdisk into a kernel
>> - maybe even with the ramdisk having a magic number start and end and
>> a magic number at the end and allow just concatenating the ramdisk
>> onto a kernel?
> 
> Well, that is basically how it is done with mdsetimage(8). The point
> is to avoid storing the ramdisk content multiple times during the release
> build (which happens e.g. on i386 with the ramdisk content module).

Alas, most/qll of our platforms load the kernel directly into memory.

But for the those that use u-boot, we probably could put the ramdisk image into 
a u-boot ramdisk image.  Then we need to do the equivalent of mdsetimage early 
in boot.  And it would complicate the install process considerably.  However, I 
don't it will save that much since ramdiskbin is only about 4MB and even 
duplicating that 30 times is only 120MB.

Most the space from the kernels comes have makeoptions DEBUG="-g" in the config 
files.  Having a way a build could override that would result in significant 
savings.

Maybe config should take a -g{,0} option which would add makeoptions DEBUG="-g" 
automagically if -g was present or making sure makeoptions DEBUG= is ignored if 
-g0 was present.

Then etc/Makefile could invoke config with -g0 to suppress making gdb kernels.