A Demo of ConfigFix: Semantic Abstraction of Kconfig, SAT-based Configuration, and DIMACS Export

The Linux kernel and its huge configuration space (>15,000 features) has been a frequent study object.While the research community has developed intelligent software configuration tools, often motivated by the Linux kernel and its configuration language Kconfig, the kernel's own configurator xconfig lacks behind.Configuration conflicts need to be resolved manually, which often causes substantial overhead.Unfortunately, Kconfig is a complex and intricate language, and while transformations into propositional logic exist, they typically have shortcomings and are difficult to integrate into xconfig.We contribute research results back to the Linux community and present a demo of ConfigFix.It is a plain-C-based extension of xconfig, providing the currently most accurate abstraction of the Kconfig semantics into propositional logic.It provides configuration conflict resolution.Integrated into the xconfig UI, it offers configuration fixes to users trying to enable or disable kernel features restricted by dependencies.In addition, researchers benefit from the DIMACS export.Our demo presents the main capabilities of xconfig as well as its evaluation showing the accuracy of it.

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Publication Details

Published
2025-02-04
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1145/3715340.3715445
Primary Topic
Advanced Software Engineering Methodologies
Type
article
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article

A Demo of ConfigFix: Semantic Abstraction of Kconfig, SAT-based Configuration, and DIMACS Export

Patrick Franz, Thorsten Berger, Jan Sollmann, Jude Gyimah et al.
Advanced Software Engineering Methodologies
article

A Demo of ConfigFix: Semantic Abstraction of Kconfig, SAT-based Configuration, and DIMACS Export

Patrick Franz, Thorsten Berger, Jan Sollmann, Jude Gyimah, Ole Schuerks
article en

Abstract

The Linux kernel and its huge configuration space (>15,000 features) has been a frequent study object.While the research community has developed intelligent software configuration tools, often motivated by the Linux kernel and its configuration language Kconfig, the kernel's own configurator xconfig lacks behind.Configuration conflicts need to be resolved manually, which often causes substantial overhead.Unfortunately, Kconfig is a complex and intricate language, and while transformations into propositional logic exist, they typically have shortcomings and are difficult to integrate into xconfig.We contribute research results back to the Linux community and present a demo of ConfigFix.It is a plain-C-based extension of xconfig, providing the currently most accurate abstraction of the Kconfig semantics into propositional logic.It provides configuration conflict resolution.Integrated into the xconfig UI, it offers configuration fixes to users trying to enable or disable kernel features restricted by dependencies.In addition, researchers benefit from the DIMACS export.Our demo presents the main capabilities of xconfig as well as its evaluation showing the accuracy of it.

Chalmers University of Technology (SE), University of Gothenburg (SE), Ruhr University Bochum (DE)
Openalex Percentile: Top 95%
Advanced Software Engineering Methodologies
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A Demo of ConfigFix: Semantic Abstraction of Kconfig, SAT-based Configuration, and DIMACS Export — Patrick Franz, Thorsten Berger, et al. · (2025) | TGRS Research Map | TGRS