Can we stop building modules for hardware that doesn't exist on the target device?

[Kriston]

Can we stop building modules for hardware that doesn't exist on the target device?

My observation is that we seem to be building the entire kernel tree, but correct me if I'm wrong.

Let's see if we can only build hardware that actually exists on the device instead of building everything.

 

For example, my Pine64 doesn't even have WiFi but dozens of WiFi drivers are built. 

Same with my Orange Pi 3 LTS, it has BlueTooth and WiFi, but doesn't need the several dozen other BlueTooth and WiFi devices built into its kernel modules directory.

 

Thanks!

 

[Werner]

Having individual kernel configurations for each and every board would be insane. Having combined configurations for families is hard enough to maintain.

If you like to have a kernel with less modules (which btw. when not loaded only need some space on sd and do not affect CPU/memory so it is kind of waste of time) you have to do that on your own.

 

Disabling 3rd party WiFi drivers is fairly simply by setting EXTRAWIFI to no.

Also checkout https://docs.armbian.com/Developer-Guide_Build-Preparation/