Cc: certs/ people

[re-ordered quote]
On Mon, Aug 11, 2025 at 02:28:56PM +0800, longguang.yue wrote:
> At 2025-08-10 04:11:57, "Nicolas Schier" <nicolas.schier@linux.dev> wrote:
> > On Sat, Aug 09, 2025 at 08:04:05PM +0800 longguang.yue wrote:
> > > deletes temporary signing_key.x509 and reserves user-defined x509.genkey
> > 
> > can you elaborate the actual problem with some more details?
> > 
> > certs/signing_key.x509 is removed during 'make clean' which is a dependency
> > of 'mrproper'.
> > 
> > 'mrproper' is meant to remove everything that might influence a subsequent
> > call of kbuild for the sane architecture.
> > 
> > Without further details I cannot see any problem here.
> > 
> > Kind regards,
> > Nicolas
[...]
> 
>   It should not delete x509.genkey because of its exsitence in gitignore.
> Normally, users want to keep  a self-defined x509.genkey,  but mrproper deletes it, only default_x509.genkey is effective. 
> After applying this patch, users just need to copy self-defined x509.genkey into certs directory once.

'make mrproper' is meant to prepare the source tree to be as pristine as 
possible for the given architecture.  This includes removal of any 
configuration file(s) that influence subsequent builds.  From kbuild 
point of view, certs/x509.genkey is also a kind of a configuration file, 
as leaving it in tree after mrproper creates different build results 
compared to a build from a really pristine source tree.

Iff the certs/ maintainers think that retaining a user x509.genkey file 
over a mrproper makes sense, then we should probably adjust the rule for 
generating $(objtree)/certs/x509.genkey, e.g. by allowing to provide one 
by environment variable.

David or David, do you have an opinion on this?

Kind regards,
Nicolas