Linux Kernel Backports

One of the main challenges when creating custom Linux Kernel images is choosing the adequate drivers composing it, respectively to the target machine. We want all needed hardware functionalities to be enabled in software but also, either from performance of security reasons, the number of unnecessary modules to be minimal. The configuration system provides several methods of achieving this goal either by generating a default configuration or by letting the user select the needed drivers but, by far the most interesting solution is the automated disabling of unused modules with localmodconfig configuration.

Linux Kernel backports are a solution to provide drivers released on newer kernels to be available for usage on older kernels. APIs and data structures change over time but drivers should provide functionality in any case.

This project aims to add support for Linux Kernel backports in already existing configuration option, localmodconfig. The goal is to automatically determine the available functionalities not only from the drivers provided by the current kernel version but also from all the backported ones. Extensions of this project could fill some gaps in upstream Linux.