Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1751365AbXBFGW1 (ORCPT ); Tue, 6 Feb 2007 01:22:27 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1751744AbXBFGW1 (ORCPT ); Tue, 6 Feb 2007 01:22:27 -0500 Received: from waste.org ([66.93.16.53]:41237 "EHLO waste.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1750887AbXBFGW0 (ORCPT ); Tue, 6 Feb 2007 01:22:26 -0500 Date: Tue, 6 Feb 2007 00:09:37 -0600 From: Matt Mackall To: Theodore Tso , David Woodhouse , Linus Torvalds , Randy Dunlap , Ingo Molnar , Linux Kernel Mailing List Subject: Re: [patch] MTD: fix DOC2000/2001/2001PLUS build error Message-ID: <20070206060937.GM16722@waste.org> References: <1170710272.29759.894.camel@pmac.infradead.org> <1170711587.29759.909.camel@pmac.infradead.org> <1170712393.29759.925.camel@pmac.infradead.org> <20070205143110.fca62b57.randy.dunlap@oracle.com> <1170717694.29759.941.camel@pmac.infradead.org> <20070206010958.GA31809@thunk.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20070206010958.GA31809@thunk.org> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.9i Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 2245 Lines: 51 On Mon, Feb 05, 2007 at 08:09:58PM -0500, Theodore Tso wrote: > On Mon, Feb 05, 2007 at 11:21:34PM +0000, David Woodhouse wrote: > > But Alan makes a reasonable suggestion -- we could work around this in > > the tools too. > > I wouldn't call it "work around this" in the tools. It's a useful > feature we can add in the tools for developers who aren't men enough > to use "sed/grep" pipelines. :-) > > But I have to agree with Linus here that we should be optimizing the > tools for people who know how to compile the kernel, but who aren't > necessarily familiar with all of the hidden dependencies in the > literally hundreds of config options in the kernel tree. In reality, > you want to make it easy to turn on *or* off any arbitrary config > option, and to understand what you need to do so you can turn an > arbitrary config option on or off. If that means tools enhancements, > so be it. With apt (or presumably with yum), you can happily apt-remove a package that nothing else depends on. If you remove something that other things depend on, you get a list of those things and opportunity to force it (with a -f flag, for instance). If you ask for a package that has other dependencies, it automatically pulls all those things in unless there's a conflict. In which case you can force it again. There's no reason we shouldn't be able to do exactly that with config symbols in Kconfig-land. The only difference is that we've got slightly different semantics for our "depend" keyword. Things which don't have their "depend" requirements met aren't offered as options. Whereas "select" is "automatically pull in dependencies" apt/yum-style. While we're at it, it would also be nice to be able to do: $ kconfig enable ACPI CONFIG_ACPI conflicts with CONFIG_APM $ kconfig enable -F ACPI disabling CONFIG_APM $ kconfig disable SCSI CONFIG_USB_STORAGE depends on CONFIG_SCSI $ kconfig disable -f SCSI disabling USB_STORAGE $ make -- Mathematics is the supreme nostalgia of our time. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/