Table of contents

• Overview
• Installation
  • Installation with pip
  • Manual installation
  • Installation for the Linux kernel
• Library documentation
• Library features
  • Kconfig extensions
• Other features
• Menuconfig interfaces
• Examples
  • Example scripts
  • Real-world examples
  • Sample make iscriptconfig session
• Test suite
• Notes
• Thanks
• License

Overview

Kconfiglib is a Kconfig implementation in Python 2/3. It started out as a helper library, but now has a enough functionality to also work well as a standalone Kconfig implementation (including menuconfig interfaces and Kconfig extensions).

The entire library is contained in kconfiglib.py. The bundled scripts are implemented on top of it. Implementing your own scripts should be relatively easy, if needed.

The Zephyr project uses Kconfiglib exclusively, with lots of small helper scripts in other projects.

Kconfiglib implements the recently added Kconfig preprocessor. For backwards compatibility, environment variables can be referenced both as $(FOO) (the new syntax) and as $FOO (the old syntax). The old syntax is deprecated, but will probably be supported for a very long time (the major version would be increased if support is ever dropped). Using the old syntax with an undefined environment variable keeps the string as is.

Note: See this issue if you run into a "macro expanded to blank string" error with kernel 4.18+.

Installation

Installation with pip

Kconfiglib is available on PyPI and can be installed with e.g.

$ pip(3) install kconfiglib

Microsoft Windows is supported.

The pip installation will give you both the base library and the following executables. All but one mirror functionality available in the C tools.

• menuconfig
• oldconfig
• alldefconfig
• allnoconfig
• allmodconfig
• allyesconfig
• genconfig

genconfig is intended to be run at build time. It generates a C header from the configuration and (optionally) information that can be used to rebuild only files that reference Kconfig symbols that have changed value.

The menuconfig implementation requires Python 3. It uses get_wch(), which is needed for Unicode input support. Unfortunately, get_wch() isn't available in the Python 2 version of the standard curses module.

Note: If you install Kconfiglib with pip's --user flag, make sure that your PATH includes the directory where the executables end up. You can list the installed files with pip(3) show -f kconfiglib.

All releases have a corresponding tag in the git repository, e.g. v10.6.1. (the latest version).

Semantic versioning is used. There's been eight small changes (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8) to the behavior of the API, which is why the major version is at 10 rather than 2. I do major version bumps for all behavior changes, even tiny ones.

Manual installation

Just drop kconfiglib.py and the scripts you want somewhere. There are no third-party dependencies (except for the windows-curses package on Windows, when running the terminal menuconfig implementation).

Installation for the Linux kernel

See the module docstring at the top of kconfiglib.py.

Library documentation

Kconfiglib comes with extensive documentation in the form of docstrings. To view it, run e.g. the following command:

$ pydoc kconfiglib

For HTML output, add -w:

$ pydoc -w kconfiglib

A good starting point is to read the module docstring (which you could also just read directly at the beginning of kconfiglib.py). It gives an introduction to symbol values, the menu tree, and expressions.

After reading the module docstring, a good next step is to read the Kconfig class documentation, and then the documentation for the Symbol, Choice, and MenuNode classes.

Please tell me if something is unclear or can be explained better.

Library features

Kconfiglib can do the following, among other things:

• Programmatically get and set symbol values

  See allnoconfig.py and allyesconfig.py, which are automatically verified to produce identical output to the standard make allnoconfig and make allyesconfig.

• Read and write .config and defconfig files

  The generated .config and defconfig (minimal configuration) files are character-for-character identical to what the C implementation would generate (except for the header comment). The test suite relies on this, as it compares the generated files.

• Write C headers

  The generated headers use the same format as include/generated/autoconf.h from the Linux kernel.

• Implement incremental builds

  This uses the same scheme as the include/config directory in the kernel: Symbols are translated into files that are touched when the symbol's value changes between builds, which can be used to avoid having to do a full rebuild whenever the configuration is changed.

  See the sync_deps() function for more information.

• Inspect symbols

  Printing a symbol or other item (which calls __str__()) returns its definition in Kconfig format. This also works for symbols defined in multiple locations.

  A helpful __repr__() is on all objects too.

  All __str__() and __repr__() methods are deliberately implemented with just public APIs, so all symbol information can be fetched separately as well.

• Inspect expressions

  Expressions use a simple tuple-based format that can be processed manually if needed. Expression printing and evaluation functions are provided, implemented with public APIs.

• Inspect the menu tree

  The underlying menu tree is exposed, including submenus created implicitly from symbols depending on preceding symbols. This can be used e.g. to implement menuconfig-like functionality.

  See menuconfig.py and the minimalistic menuconfig_example.py example.

Kconfig extensions

The following Kconfig extensions are available:

• source supports glob patterns and includes each matching file. A pattern is required to match at least one file.

  A separate osource statement is available for cases where it's okay for the pattern to match no files (in which case osource turns into a no-op).

• A relative source statement (rsource) is available, where file paths are specified relative to the directory of the current Kconfig file. An orsource statement is available as well, analogous to osource.

• def_int, def_hex, and def_string are available in addition to def_bool and def_tristate, allowing int, hex, and string symbols to be given a type and a default at the same time.

  These can be useful in projects that make use of symbols defined in multiple locations, and remove some Kconfig inconsistency.

• Environment variables are expanded directly in e.g. source and mainmenu statements, meaning option env symbols are redundant.

  This is the standard behavior with the new Kconfig preprocessor, which Kconfiglib implements.

  option env symbols are supported for backwards compatibility, with the caveat that they must have the same name as the environment variables they reference. A warning is printed if the names differ.

• Setting the environment variable KCONFIG_STRICT to "y" will cause warnings to be printed for all references to undefined Kconfig symbols within Kconfig files. The only gotcha is that all hex literals must be prefixed by "0x" or "0X", to make it possible to distuinguish them from symbol references.

  Some projects (e.g. the Linux kernel) use multiple Kconfig trees with many shared Kconfig files, leading to some safe undefined symbol references. KCONFIG_STRICT is useful in projects that only have a single Kconfig tree though.

Other features

• Single-file implementation

  The entire library is contained in kconfiglib.py.

  The tools implemented on top of it are one file each.

• Runs unmodified under both Python 2 and Python 3

  The code mostly uses basic Python features and has no third-party dependencies. The most advanced things used are probably @property and __slots__.

• Robust and highly compatible with the standard Kconfig C tools

  The test suite automatically compares output from Kconfiglib and the C tools by diffing the generated .config files for the real kernel Kconfig and defconfig files, for all ARCHes.

  This currently involves comparing the output for 36 ARCHes and 498 defconfig files (or over 18000 ARCH/defconfig combinations in "obsessive" test suite mode). All tests are expected to pass.

  A comprehensive suite of selftests is included as well.

• Not horribly slow despite being a pure Python implementation

  The allyesconfig.py script currently runs in about 1.3 seconds on a Core i7 2600K (with a warm file cache), including the make overhead from make scriptconfig.

  Kconfiglib is especially speedy in cases where multiple .config files need to be processed, because the Kconfig files will only need to be parsed once.

  For long-running jobs, PyPy gives a big performance boost. CPython is faster for short-running jobs as PyPy needs some time to warm up.

  Kconfiglib also works well with the multiprocessing module. No global state is kept.

• Generates more warnings than the C implementation

  Generates the same warnings as the C implementation, plus additional ones. Also detects dependency and source loops.

  All warnings point out the location(s) in the Kconfig files where a symbol is defined, where applicable.

• Unicode support

  Unicode characters in string literals in Kconfig and .config files are correctly handled. This support mostly comes for free from Python.

• Windows support

  Nothing Linux-specific is used. Universal newlines mode is used for both Python 2 and Python 3.

  The Zephyr project uses Kconfiglib to generate .config files and C headers on Linux as well as Windows.

• Internals that (mostly) mirror the C implementation

  While being simpler to understand and tweak.

Menuconfig interfaces

Two configuration interfaces are currently available:

• menuconfig.py is a terminal-based configuration interface implemented using the standard Python curses module. xconfig features like showing invisible symbols and showing symbol names are included, and it's possible to jump directly to a symbol in the menu tree (even if it's currently invisible).

  

  menuconfig.py currently only supports Python 3, mostly due to curses.get_wch() not being available on Python 2. It is needed for Unicode support.

  There are no third-party dependencies on *nix. On Windows, the curses modules is not available by default, but support can be added by installing the windows-curses package (which is installed automatically when Kconfiglib is installed via pip on Windows):

  $ pip install windows-curses

  This uses wheels built from this repository, which is in turn based on Christoph Gohlke's Python Extension Packages for Windows.

  See the docstring at the top of menuconfig.py for more information about the terminal menuconfig implementation.

• RomaVis has built a fully portable Python 2/3 TkInter menuconfig implementation. It is still a work-in-progress, but is already functional.

  See the pymenuconfig project for more information.

  Screenshot below:

  

  While working on the terminal menuconfig implementation, I added a few APIs to Kconfiglib that turned out to be handy. pymenuconfig predates the terminal menuconfig, and so didn't have them available. Blame me for any workarounds.

Examples

Example scripts

The examples/ directory contains some simple example scripts. Among these are the following ones. Make sure you run them with the latest version of Kconfiglib, as they might make use of newly added features.

• defconfig.py has the same effect as going into make menuconfig and immediately saving and exiting.
• eval_expr.py evaluates an expression in the context of a configuration.
• find_symbol.py searches through expressions to find references to a symbol, also printing a "backtrace" with parents for each reference found.
• help_grep.py searches for a string in all help texts.
• print_tree.py prints a tree of all configuration items.
• print_config_tree.py is similar to print_tree.py, but dumps the tree as it would appear in menuconfig, including values. This can be handy for visually diffing between .config files and different versions of Kconfig files.
• list_undefined.py finds references to symbols that are not defined by any architecture in the Linux kernel.
• merge_config.py merges configuration fragments to produce a complete .config, similarly to scripts/kconfig/merge_config.sh from the kernel.
• menuconfig_example.py implements a configuration interface that uses notation similar to make menuconfig. It's deliberately kept as simple as possible to demonstrate just the core concepts.

Real-world examples

• kconfig.py from the Zephyr project handles .config and header file generation, also doing configuration fragment merging.
• genrest.py generates a Kconfig symbol cross-reference, which can be viewed here.
• Various utilities from the ACRN project.

These use the older Kconfiglib 1 API, which was clunkier and not as general (functions instead of properties, no direct access to the menu structure or properties, uglier __str__() output):

• genboardscfg.py from Das U-Boot generates some sort of legacy board database by pulling information from a newly added Kconfig-based configuration system (as far as I understand it :).
• gen-manual-lists.py generated listings for an appendix in the Buildroot manual. (The listing has since been removed.)
• gen_kconfig_doc.py from the esp-idf project generates documentation from Kconfig files.
• SConf builds an interactive configuration interface (like menuconfig) on top of Kconfiglib, for use e.g. with SCons.
• kconfig-diff.py -- a script by dubiousjim that compares kernel configurations.
• Originally, Kconfiglib was used in chapter 4 of my master's thesis to automatically generate a "minimal" kernel for a given system. Parts of it bother me a bit now, but that's how it goes with old work.

Sample make iscriptconfig session

The following log should give some idea of the functionality available in the API:

$ make iscriptconfig
A Kconfig instance 'kconf' for the architecture x86 has been created.
>>> kconf  # Calls Kconfig.__repr__()
<configuration with 13711 symbols, main menu prompt "Linux/x86 4.14.0-rc7 Kernel Configuration", srctree ".", config symbol prefix "CONFIG_", warnings enabled, undef. symbol assignment warnings disabled>
>>> kconf.mainmenu_text  # Expanded main menu text
'Linux/x86 4.14.0-rc7 Kernel Configuration'
>>> kconf.top_node  # The implicit top-level menu
<menu node for menu, prompt "Linux/$ARCH $KERNELVERSION Kernel Configuration" (visibility y), deps y, 'visible if' deps y, has child, Kconfig:5>
>>> kconf.top_node.list  # First child menu node
<menu node for symbol SRCARCH, deps y, has next, Kconfig:7>
>>> print(kconf.top_node.list)  # Calls MenuNode.__str__()
config SRCARCH
    string
    option env="SRCARCH"
    default "x86"

>>> sym = kconf.top_node.list.next.item  # Item contained in next menu node
>>> print(sym)  # Calls Symbol.__str__()
config 64BIT
    bool
    prompt "64-bit kernel" if ARCH = "x86"
    default ARCH != "i386"
    help
      Say yes to build a 64-bit kernel - formerly known as x86_64
      Say no to build a 32-bit kernel - formerly known as i386

>>> sym  # Calls Symbol.__repr__()
<symbol 64BIT, bool, "64-bit kernel", value y, visibility y, direct deps y, arch/x86/Kconfig:2>
>>> sym.assignable  # Currently assignable values (0, 1, 2 = n, m, y)
(0, 2)
>>> sym.set_value(0)  # Set it to n
True
>>> sym.tri_value  # Check the new value
0
>>> sym = kconf.syms["X86_MPPARSE"]  # Look up symbol by name
>>> print(sym)
config X86_MPPARSE
    bool
    prompt "Enable MPS table" if (ACPI || SFI) && X86_LOCAL_APIC
    default "y" if X86_LOCAL_APIC
    help
      For old smp systems that do not have proper acpi support. Newer systems
      (esp with 64bit cpus) with acpi support, MADT and DSDT will override it

>>> default = sym.defaults[0]  # Fetch its first default
>>> sym = default[1]  # Fetch the default's condition (just a Symbol here)
>>> print(sym)  # Print it. Dependencies are propagated to properties, like in the C implementation.
config X86_LOCAL_APIC
    bool
    default "y" if X86_64 || SMP || X86_32_NON_STANDARD || X86_UP_APIC || PCI_MSI
    select IRQ_DOMAIN_HIERARCHY if X86_64 || SMP || X86_32_NON_STANDARD || X86_UP_APIC || PCI_MSI
    select PCI_MSI_IRQ_DOMAIN if PCI_MSI && (X86_64 || SMP || X86_32_NON_STANDARD || X86_UP_APIC || PCI_MSI)

>>> sym.nodes  # Show the MenuNode(s) associated with it
[<menu node for symbol X86_LOCAL_APIC, deps n, has next, arch/x86/Kconfig:1015>]
>>> kconfiglib.expr_str(sym.defaults[0][1])  # Print the default's condition
'X86_64 || SMP || X86_32_NON_STANDARD || X86_UP_APIC || PCI_MSI'
>>> kconfiglib.expr_value(sym.defaults[0][1])  # Evaluate it (0 = n)
0
>>> kconf.syms["64BIT"].set_value(2)
True
>>> kconfiglib.expr_value(sym.defaults[0][1])  # Evaluate it again (2 = y)
2
>>> kconf.write_config("myconfig")  # Save a .config
>>> ^D
$ cat myconfig
# Generated by Kconfiglib (https://github.com/ulfalizer/Kconfiglib)
CONFIG_64BIT=y
CONFIG_X86_64=y
CONFIG_X86=y
CONFIG_INSTRUCTION_DECODER=y
CONFIG_OUTPUT_FORMAT="elf64-x86-64"
CONFIG_ARCH_DEFCONFIG="arch/x86/configs/x86_64_defconfig"
CONFIG_LOCKDEP_SUPPORT=y
CONFIG_STACKTRACE_SUPPORT=y
CONFIG_MMU=y
...

Test suite

The test suite is run with

$ python(3) Kconfiglib/testsuite.py

pypy works too, and is much speedier for everything except allnoconfig.py/allnoconfig_simpler.py/allyesconfig.py, where it doesn't have time to warm up since the scripts are run via make scriptconfig.

The test suite must be run from the top-level kernel directory. It requires that the Kconfiglib git repository has been cloned into it and that the makefile patch has been applied.

To get rid of warnings generated for the kernel Kconfig files, add 2>/dev/null to the command to discard stderr.

NOTE: Forgetting to apply the Makefile patch will cause some tests that compare generated configurations to fail

NOTE: The test suite overwrites .config in the kernel root, so make sure to back it up.

The test suite consists of a set of selftests and a set of compatibility tests that compare configurations generated by Kconfiglib with configurations generated by the C tools, for a number of cases. See testsuite.py for the available options.

The tests/reltest script runs the test suite and all the example scripts for both Python 2 and Python 3, verifying that everything works.

Rarely, the output from the C tools is changed slightly (most recently due to a change I added). If you get test suite failures, try running the test suite again against the linux-next tree, which has all the latest changes. I will make it clear if any non-backwards-compatible changes appear.

A lot of time is spent waiting around for make and the C utilities (which need to reparse all the Kconfig files for each defconfig test). Adding some multiprocessing to the test suite would make sense too.

Notes

• This is version 2 of Kconfiglib, which is not backwards-compatible with Kconfiglib 1. For a summary of changes between Kconfiglib 1 and Kconfiglib 2, see kconfiglib-2-changes.txt.

• I sometimes see people add custom output formats, which is pretty straightforward to do (see the implementations of write_autoconf() and write_config() for a template). If you come up with something you think might be useful to other people, I'm happy to take it in upstream. Batteries included and all that.

• Kconfiglib assumes the modules symbol is MODULES, which is backwards-compatible. A warning is printed by default if option modules is set on some other symbol.

  Let me know if you need proper option modules support. It wouldn't be that hard to add.

• The test suite failures (should be the only ones) for the following Blackfin defconfigs on e.g. Linux 3.7.0-rc8 are due to a bug in the C implementation:

  • arch/blackfin/configs/CM-BF537U_defconfig
  • arch/blackfin/configs/BF548-EZKIT_defconfig
  • arch/blackfin/configs/BF527-EZKIT_defconfig
  • arch/blackfin/configs/BF527-EZKIT-V2_defconfig
  • arch/blackfin/configs/TCM-BF537_defconfig

Thanks

• To RomaVis, for making pymenuconfig and suggesting the rsource keyword.
• To Mitja Horvat, for adding support for user-defined styles to the terminal menuconfig.
• To Philip Craig for adding support for the allnoconfig_y option and fixing an obscure issue with comments inside choices (that didn't affect correctness but made outputs differ). allnoconfig_y is used to force certain symbols to y during make allnoconfig to improve coverage.

License

See LICENSE.txt. SPDX license identifiers are used in the source code.