Re: Shouldn't kconfig defaults match recommendations in help text?

From: Jesper Juhl (juhl-lkml_at_dif.dk)
Date: 08/24/04

  • Next message: William Lee Irwin III: "fix text reporting in O(1) proc_pid_statm()" 
    Date:	Tue, 24 Aug 2004 19:03:55 +0200 (CEST)
To: Mikael Pettersson <mikpe@csd.uu.se>

    On Tue, 24 Aug 2004, Mikael Pettersson wrote:

    > Jesper Juhl writes:
    > > [quote]
    > >
    > > The processor's performance-monitoring counters are special-purpose
    > > global registers. This option adds support for virtual per-process
    > > performance-monitoring counters which only run when the process
    > > to which they belong is executing. This improves the accuracy of
    > > performance measurements by reducing "noise" from other processes.
    > >
    > > Say Y.
    > >
    > > Virtual performance counters support (PERFCTR_VIRTUAL) [N/y/?] (NEW)
    > >
    > > [/quote]
    > >
    > >
    > > I just picked the above randomly, there are several other cases like it.
    > >
    > > The comment clearly makes a recommendation that the user enables (in this
    > > case) the option, yet the default is the exact opposite. What is the point
    > > in that?
    > > I don't see anything but confusion amongst users as the result of such
    > > inconsistency.
    >
    > This particular mismatch occurs because the Kconfig entry
    > doesn't have a "default" line, so Kconfig defaults to "n".
    >
    > It makes little sense to disable PERFCTR_VIRTUAL when
    > PERFCTR is enabled, so providing a "default y" for
    > PERFCTR_VIRTUAL is the right thing to do.
    > (It's an option because the design allows several
    > independent high-level services on top of the low-level
    > code. Currently there's only one high-level service in
    > 2.6-mm, but with several it's reasonable to allow users
    > to enable only those they actually want.)
    >
    I had not investigated it in detail since it was simply one randomly
    picked example out of several, but thank you for the detailed explanation.

    > > Would patches to change default configuration choices to match the
    > > recommendation given in the help text (if any) be acceptable? If not I'd
    > > be interrested in the reasons why not.
    > >
    > > If such patches are acceptable/wanted I'll be happy to supply them.
    >
    > Feel free to do so :-)
    >
    I'll post such patches in a short while. Sepperate mails, one pr patch
    changing one kconfig default pr patch. 

    --
Jesper Juhl
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