Re: Ingo, no more kconfig patches

On Sat, May 03, 2008 at 09:14:45PM +0200, Ingo Molnar wrote:

* Adrian Bunk <bunk@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Thu, May 01, 2008 at 04:52:34AM +0200, Ingo Molnar wrote:

* Adrian Bunk <bunk@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I would really appreciate it if you could send the error message
and the .config but not quick kconfig patches that are often wrong
and that you try to push through the maintainers as you tried
here.

hey, sorry about invading your turf of trivial patches ;) I dont see
it as a problem that the thought process and the initial patch is
incomplete and ad-hoc. My preference is to work with people out in
the open, even on trivial issues. Dmitry is a capable maintainer who
understands his code very well and he'll resist me if i'm full of
it. Just like i resisted you when you were full of it. That's what
maintainers do, their job is to know their code.

And, occasionally, as in this case, i might end up being faced with
a bug in the code i maintain ;)

You completely miss my point.

You wrongly (and loudly) blamed Dmitry for something you broke
yourself.

i didnt. Read what i wrote:

|| no, you are wrong, read the current Kconfig rules again. If the user
|| can create a .config that does not build, it is driver breakage. It
|| always was, and has been in the past 15 years.
||
|| Kconfig might be extended to make dependencies easier to manage for
|| developers but until that is implemented you have to craft your
|| driver's dependencies with the current tools in a way that doesnt
|| break the build.

and that's exactly what happens with Roman's patch: a Kconfig subsystem
design bug (its inability to properly propagate the dependencies of
select's) is worked around in the driver space: by the LEDS_CORE driver
config introduction and no user-visible.

Roman's patch is obviously cleaner than my hack (i just fixed a single
instantiation of the problem, while he changed the LEDS driver
dependency structure), but it's still a workaround for a Kconfig
subsystem bug and the same problem could reoccur elsewhere. It could hit
anytime dual dependencies are introduced in a driver accidentally.

Ingo, perhaps it helps if I put it in caps:

YOU TRIED TO PUSH AN INPUT PATCH FOR AN X86 BUG.

Roman's patch is better than adding a select, but your patch would have
added the select in the completely wrong subsystem.

Why can't you admit the patch you tried to push was wrong?

As Sam said it, fixing that Kconfig design bug would be "nice" - but
unfortunately the Kconfig subsystem is not actively developed anymore.

Roman is still active.

Would you like to volunteer for that? It would be a _very_ useful
contribution. One such fix could avoid hundreds or even thousands of
trivial problems in the future - it could avoid having to make hundreds
or thousands of trivial patches in the future.

Different to you I actually have some basic understanding how kconfig
works.

I'm not even sure the semantics of "select follows dependencies"
would actually be better than what we have today.

Ingo

cu
Adrian

--

"Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out
of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
"Only a promise," Lao Er said.
Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed

--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/

Relevant Pages

  • Re: [GIT PATCHES] V4L/DVB fixes for 2.6.26
    ... There are yet a number of other Kconfig potential breakages at V4L/DVB. ... having a DVB driver foo as module, and V4L driver bar as in-kernel. ... dependencies and offer a usable kconfig UI to the user, ... It would be nice if you could help on fixing those issues. ...
    (Linux-Kernel)
  • Re: [patch] MTD: fix DOC2000/2001/2001PLUS build error
    ... DiskOnChip driver. ... yeah, i mis-analyzed the point of breakage - and my Kconfig hack simply ... I come across this frequently -- and I just look at the Kconfig file ... to see the dependencies of the option I want to enable. ...
    (Linux-Kernel)
  • Re: [GIT PATCHES] V4L/DVB fixes for 2.6.26
    ... There are yet a number of other Kconfig potential breakages at V4L/DVB. ... having a DVB driver foo as module, and V4L driver bar as in-kernel. ... dependencies and offer a usable kconfig UI to the user, ... It would be nice if you could help on fixing those issues. ...
    (Linux-Kernel)
  • Marvell sk98lin driver fix
    ... At least on this 2.6.27.7 Linux kernel, ... version 10.70.2.3 fails to correctly patch the kernel source. ... Set up networking such that no driver for the Marvell NIC is loaded ... Restore the Kconfig backup; make sure you destroy the patched Kconfig ...
    (comp.os.linux.networking)
  • Re: [GIT PATCHES] V4L/DVB fixes for 2.6.26
    ... There are yet a number of other Kconfig potential breakages at V4L/DVB. ... having a DVB driver foo as module, and V4L driver bar as in-kernel. ... dependencies and offer a usable kconfig UI to the user, ...
    (Linux-Kernel)