Compile kernel and make yourself notes

[Alan Turing]

Meanwhile, I am configuring the kernel of my linux machines by myself for serveral years. But I seems to me that I am doing the same mistakes several times. At least I am searching the same information over and over again.

Therefore I started to make myself some notes about options that were necessary for a device to work or that caused problems.
Unfortunately this is teadious and ended in a mess.

One option would be to write my notes consequently in the .config file. But these comments might get lost while doing
make oldconfig and I prefer make menuconfig over editing the .config file with a texteditor.

Is there some tool like make menuconfig that allows to write own comments to configuration options?
How do you solve the problem of remembering the effect of every single configuration option to your computer?

[NeddySeagoon]

Alan Turing,

You must never edit the .config with a text editor. Many options in make menuconfig flip as many as four flags in the .config file.
If you don't get them all, correct, you will end up with a broken very hard to diagnose kernel.

I rarely configure a kernel from scratch, unless its a new system. Copying the .config to the new kernel, then running make oldconfig works. make menuconfig can be used for a last check.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

[XQYZ]

[d2_racing]

Yeah I use that method too.

[Alan Turing]

I thought about it for a while and got an idea of a tool that solves my problem.

Screenshot of the tool I would like to have.

The tool should be like menuconfig but the 'Help page' of every option should provide the following additional information:

• blue information
  List of decisions made in other configurations.
  Therefore the input of this tool has to be also a list of kernel configurations.
  
• green information
  Comments added by myself about this options.
  Since they are not related to a specific kernel version or machine, this information has to be stored on a central server.
  

Now the question is: Does this tool, or something similar already exist?

[XQYZ]

[Alan Turing]

No, of corse not all.

The green information, should be only comments for myself about options that I had chosen wrong once. Maybe also options that took me several minutes of investigation before I made my decision.

The blue information should be generated automatically (given some .config files, e.g. configuration of a Live-CD)

[bear24rw]

I feel like it would be easier to just keep all your notes in a text file... how are you going to find them again out of the hundreds of menu options?

Something like:

[aCOSwt]