added in https://github.com/projectatomic/rpm-ostree/pull/574 you can rpm-ostree initramfs --enable to make it so that the initramfs gets regenerated on upgrades.

[root@vanilla-f28atomic ~]# rpm-ostree initramfs --help
Usage:
  rpm-ostree initramfs [OPTION…] 

Enable or disable local initramfs regeneration

Help Options:
  -h, --help            Show help options

Application Options:
  --os=OSNAME           Operate on provided OSNAME
  --enable              Enable regenerating initramfs locally
  --arg=ARG             Append ARG to the dracut arguments
  --disable             Disable regenerating initramfs locally
  -r, --reboot          Initiate a reboot after operation is complete
  --sysroot=SYSROOT     Use system root SYSROOT (default: /)
  --peer                Force a peer-to-peer connection instead of using the system message bus
  --version             Print version information and exit

feel free to close issue if this works for you

Champion! I'll try this out. Perhaps this should be a default setting? Or easier to access? Not sure ....

I'd prefer trying to rework things so that local system configuration gets captured as a secondary overlay initramfs. The tooling mostly supports this but there's an unknown quantity of work in trying to make it the default.

The reason we don't do initramfs regeneration by default is it's a nontrivial process; doing it per-client undermines the "image" aspect to a degree.

Also it's very slow; right now e.g. we will then always regenerate the initramfs even if you just do an rpm-ostree install which gets annoying.

yeah I don't think enabling client side generation by default would be preferable

I'd prefer trying to rework things so that local system configuration gets captured as a secondary overlay initramfs.

Interesting. Should we open an upstream issue to define that as a goal?

Yes please, that would certainly solve my issue to have something like this in place.

closing this issue as the question has been answered.