Re: [PATCH 1/3] WAN Kconfig: change "depends on HDLC" to "select"

Satyam Sharma wrote:

On 5/8/07, Randy Dunlap [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

On Mon, 07 May 2007 16:31:48 -0400 Jeff Garzik wrote:

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Satyam Sharma wrote:

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Yes, mixing select and depends is a recipe for build disasters. Call
me a rabid fanatic, but I would in fact go as far as to say that this
whole "select" thing in the Kconfig process is one big BUG, and not a
feature. People are lazy by nature and would rather just "select" a
dependency for their config option than burden users with several
"depends".

Tough, the kernel community has voted against you.

Andrew (usually) implores people not to use "select" and I agree
with him.

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It makes far more sense to include a driver during kernel 

configuration,

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and have that driver pull in its libraries via 'select'.  The lame
alternative requires developers to know which libraries they need 

BEFORE

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picking their drivers, which is backwards and requires legwork on the
part of the kernel developer.

Developers?  If you had said "users," I might agree, but IMO it's
OK (or even Good) for developers to know what libraries their code
uses/requires.  Yes, that's a good thing.

You're absolutely right, but to give Jeff the benefit of the doubt I'm
sure he _meant_ "users" there although he said "developers". Stating
the obvious, the developer _has_ to know what stuff his code uses
anyway, otherwise what does he "select"s or "depends" his config
option on.

As for users, we _can_ avoid pitfalls by building a complete
dependency tree and just selecting _everything_ that we require for a
particular config option to be selected, but some users could
conceivably prefer only being _told_ about what else they need to
successfully pick a config option (than everything just getting in
behind their backs). Actually (correct me if I'm wrong), this is not
presently possible: an option is not visible unless dependencies are
already picked. Just a suggestion, though.

That's correct for menuconfig.  For xconfig, there are GUI options to
	Show Name
	Show Range
	Show Data
	Show All Options
	Show Debug Info

I often have all of them enabled.

-- 
~Randy
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