I just checked in a kinit program, which is a single static binary that
is intended as a simple framework for moving chunks of kernel
infrastructure over to initramfs.
The motivation behind kinit is twofold: to keep the size of initramfs
down by rolling everything into a single binary (otherwise there will
surely be a "we hate bloat" flamewar on l-k), and to send parts of the
kernel's command line to its different subsystems as appropriate.
There's no reason why kinit couldn't fork and exec instead of statically
linking everything in, other than the wish to avoid flame retardants.
As an initial example, ipconfig now builds as both a standalone
executable and as a part of kinit. kinit checks the kernel's command
line arguments, and if it finds any that are appropriate for ipconfig,
it passes them off to ipconfig.
I'll be spending a bit of time, over the next few days, putting much the
same thing in place for nfsroot.
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