[plug] On-line Kernel Compilation

[Ryan]

I have been idly toying around with the idea of making an on-line kernel 
compilation service for people with no clue, no CPU power, or no patience.

It is very do-able, especially for Debian with make-kpkg.  Yes, there are 
lots of security and scheduling issues, they are all sorted on a conceptual 
level.  I am not for one minute suggesting it is easy, or that I am an 
authority in this area, but given time (something I'm very short of) I 
could knock together a working system.  The hardest part that I see is 
parsing the config.in and defconfig files into a more workable and dynamic 
structure.  Maybe there is already a Perl module to parse it into a nested 
hash, I haven't looked yet :)

As a really basic overview of the on-line side, it would present a 'make 
menuconfig'-esk interace and let you submit it into some scheduling 
mechanism for compilation.  Once finished or failed, an email notification 
is sent and the package gets stored for retrieval by the requester.   Maybe 
some generic pre-compiled configurations could be offered too.

I was just intending it as a 'side-line project', but if anyone can see 
some benefit in it and wants to turn it into a 'group side-line project' 
and possibly 'sourceforge' it or 'plugforge (tm)' it, shout out.

Any thoughts on this subject?  Has this already been done and I can't find 
it for my searching?

Ryan