Kernel Hell and what to do about it

I've been in kernel hell with my home system for the past couple of days. What I want to build is a custom kernel that'll do xen, vserver, vmware, selinux, support both my wireless chipsets and support my video chipset. Ideally it should be built the Debian/Ubuntu way, so it just works on my Ubuntu Hardy Heron system.

So far I've had various combinations of four or five out of six working at once.

I'm not a kernel hacker, but I have a PhD in computer science, so I should be able to at least make progress on this, and the fact that I can't is very frustrating. At work I grabbed a kernel off a co-worker, but it wasn't built the Debian/Ubuntu way.

Standing back and looking at the problem, there seem to be two separate contributing factors:

1. There are a huge number of organically-grown structural layers. I count git, the kernel build scripts, make, Linus's release system, the Debian kernel building system and the ubuntu kernel building system. I won't deny that each of these service a purpose, but that's is different points a which each of the six different things I'm trying to make work can begin their explanation of how to make them work and six different places for things to go wrong.
2. There are about many Linux distributions and each of the things I'm trying to get working caters to a different set of them.

In many ways the distribution kernel packagers are victims of their own success, most Ubuntu, debian and RedHat kernels just work because they're packagers keep adding more and more features and more and more drivers to the default kernels. With the default kernels working for so many people, fewer and fewer people build their own kernels and the pool of knowledge shrinks. The depth of that knowledge increases too, with the each evolution of the collective build system.

Wouldn't it be great if someone (ideally under the auspices of the OSDL) stepped in and said "This is insane, we need a system to allow users to build their own kernels from a set of <git repository, tag> pairs and a set of flags (a la the current kernel config system). It would download the git repositories and sync to the tags and then compile to the set of flags. Each platform can build their own GUI and their own backend so it works with their widget set and their low level architecture, but here's a prototype."

The system would take the set of repositories and tags in those repositories and download the sources with git, merge the results, use the flags to configure the build and build the kernel. Of course, sometimes the build won't work (in which case the system sends a copy of the config and the last N lines of output to a central server) and sometimes it will (in which case the system sends a copy of the config and an md5 checksum of the kernel to a central server and optionally uploads the kernel to a local repository), but more than anything it'll make it easy and safe for regular users to compile their own kernels. The system would supplant "building kernels the Debian way" or "building kernels the RedHat way" and enable those projects working at the kernel level to provide meaningful support and help to their users on distributions other than slackware.

Potential benefits I can see are:

1. increasing the number of crash-tolerant users willing to test the latest kernel features (better testing of new kernels and new features, which is something that's frequently asked for on lkml)
2. easing the path of new device drivers (users get to use their shiny new hardware on linux faster)
3. increasing the feedback from users to developers, in terms of which features people are using/interested in (better, more responsive, kernel development)
4. reduce the reliance on linux packagers to release kernels in which an impossible-to-test number of features work flawlessly (less stressed debian/ubuntu/redhat kernel packages)
5. ease the path to advanced kernel use such as virtualisation

You know the great thing about that list? Everyone who would need to cooperate gets some benefit, which means that it might just happen...