Re: [RFC] Removing sys-kernel/vanilla-kernel

On martedì 2 giugno 2026 12:35:44 Ora legale dell’Europa centrale Michał Górny wrote:
> So, is anyone around here using them, or knows anyone who does?  If so,
> what are their reasons?

Hello Michał,

I don't have anything against removing vanilla-kernel, but I would turn this into something 
broader.

If it does not compile with GCC 16, then presumably vanilla-sources does not either. 
Therefore, I would suggest one of the following approaches:

1) Drop vanilla-sources as well.
2) Drop vanilla-sources and add a vanilla USE flag to gentoo-sources.

Regarding option 1, this would mean that gentoo-sources becomes our only supported 
kernel source package.

If a user has enough knowledge to evaluate our patches and decide they do not want 
them, it is likely that they are also capable of downloading the upstream kernel tarball and 
building their own kernel.


Regarding option 2, we could control the application of Gentoo patches through a vanilla 
USE flag, similar to what we do in sys-devel/gcc. This would still allow users to build an 
unpatched kernel via sys-kernel/gentoo-sources[vanilla].

That said, I have not analyzed whether this is technically feasible or what the maintenance 
cost would be.

Best regards
Agostino