Fernandez-Amoros, DavidHeradio, RubenHorcas Aguilera, José MiguelGalindo Duarte, José ÁngelBenavides Cuevas, David FelipeFuentes, Lidia2025-08-262025-08-262025-08Fernandez-Amoros, D., Heradio, R., Horcas Aguilera, J.M., Galindo Duarte, J.Á., Benavides Cuevas, D.F. y Fuentes, L. (2025). Pragmatic random sampling of Kconfig-based systems: A unified approach. Journal Of Systems and Software, 230 (1), 112577.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jss.2025.112577.0164-12121873-1228https://hdl.handle.net/11441/176338The configuration space of some systems is so large that it cannot be computed. This is the case with the Linux Kernel, which provides more than 18,000 configurable options described across almost 1,700 files in the Kconfig language. As a result, many analyses of these systems rely on sampling their configuration space (e.g., debugging compilation errors, predicting configuration performance, finding the configuration that optimizes specific performance metrics, among others.). The Kernel and other Kconfig-based systems can be sampled pragmatically, using their built-in tool conf to get a sample directly from the Kconfig specification that is approximately random, or idealistically, generating a genuine random sample by first translating the Kconfig files into logic formulas, then using a logic engine to compute the probability that each option value has to appear in a configuration, and finally utilizing these probabilities to generate an authentically random sample. The pros of the idealistic approach are that it ensures the sample is representative of the population, but the cons are that it sets out many challenging problems that have not been solved yet (fundamentally, how to obtain a valid translation into Boolean that covers all the Kconfig language, and how to compute the option value probabilities for very large formulas). This paper introduces a new version of conf called randconfig , which incorporates a series of improvements that increase the randomness and correctness of pragmatic sampling and also help validate the Boolean translation required for the idealistic approach. randconfig has been tested on ten versions of the Linux Kernel and twenty additional Kconfig systems. Its compatibility significantly enhances the current landscape, where some systems use a customized conf variant that is maintained independently, while others do not support sampling at all. randconfig not only offers universal sampling for all Kconfig systems but also simplifies its evolutive maintenance as a single tool rather than an unorganized collection of conf variants.application/pdf27 p.engAttribution 4.0 Internationalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Random samplingConfigurable systemsVariability modelingSoftware product linesKconfigSATRandconfiginfo:eu-repo/semantics/articleinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccesshttps://doi.org/10.1016/j.jss.2025.112577