Currently we have a small number of ktypes available for use, they are: Base Standard - includes Base Prempt-RT - includes Standard Tiny - includes Standard We should review and restructure these ktypes to allow for more flexibility and less overlap. A key example of this flexibility is to allow for disabling a feature that might be enabled in the base or standard .cfg file, such as CONFIG_EMBEDDED. Ideally this would be in an embedded.cfg as an example. Enabling CONFIG_DEBUG_KERNEL in base.cfg would be another example, while developers might want this enabled, the final production version may want a non-debug kernel for higher security. These are a couple of examples, but a review of the overlap and items that might be desired by a development kernel vs production kernel would be valuable. I would expect a very small number of additions (1-3) ktypes.
This is being worked on in conjunction with bug 8177. A new ktype is likely to be added with a name such as "devel". This ktype will enable EMBEDDED, EXPERT, DEBUG_KERNEL, and several debug features that are enabled by DEBUG_KERNEL. The base ktype will no longer have these options. A purposed set of changes has been submitted to the linux-yocto mailing list and is currently under discussion.
This has been integrated into the yocto-kernel-cache and SRCREVs are staged in -next.