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Date: Tue, 4 Dec 2001 14:29:58 +0100
From: Christoph Hellwig <hch@caldera.de>
To: "Eric S. Raymond" <esr@thyrsus.com>, Keith Owens <kaos@ocs.com.au>,
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Subject: Re: [kbuild-devel] Converting the 2.5 kernel to kbuild 2.5
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In-Reply-To: <20011204081640.A12658@thyrsus.com>; from esr@thyrsus.com on Tue, Dec 04, 2001 at 08:16:40AM -0500
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On Tue, Dec 04, 2001 at 08:16:40AM -0500, Eric S. Raymond wrote:
> N separate implementations means N dialects and N**2 compatibility problems.
> Nicer just to have *one* parser, *one* compiler, and *one* service class that
> supports several thin front-end layers, yes?  No?

Oh man.  When you think one implementation of a 'standard' is better then
multiple go to the MS world.

> > All of these tools just require the runtime contained in the LSB and no
> > funky additional script languages.  Also none needs a binary intermediate
> > representation of the config.
> 
> I quote Linus at the 2.5 kernel summit: "Python is not an issue."
> Unless and until he changes his mind about that, waving around this
> kind of argument is likely to do your case more harm than good.

For me (and others) it is an issues.

> If you want to re-open the case for saving CML1, you'd be better off
> demonstrating how CML1 can be used to (a) automatically do implied 
> side-effects when a symbol is changed,

With mconfig it can be implemented easily - I don't see the point in
doing it, though.

> (b) guarantee that the user
> cannot generate a configuration that violates stated invariants, and 

What do you mean with that?

> (c) unify the configuration tree so that the equivalents of arch/*
> files never suffer from lag or skew when an architecture-independent
> feature is added to the kernel.

One toplevel config file can be implemented in CML1 easily,
using mconfig or the old and ugly tools, it's just a question of changeing
the rule base in tree.
At last Alan think multiple toplevel files are a feature, not a bug
(I don't agree with him on that) so it's a completly separate discussion.

	Christoph

-- 
Of course it doesn't work. We've performed a software upgrade.
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