Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2007 13:23:53 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Robert P. J. Day" <rpjday@mindspring.com>
To: Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@xenotime.net>
cc: Simon Arlott <simon@fire.lp0.eu>, sam@ravnborg.org,
       Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
       Stefan Richter <stefanr@s5r6.in-berlin.de>,
       Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>, Jeff Garzik <jeff@garzik.org>,
       Gabriel C <crazy@pimpmylinux.org>, netdev@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] net/, drivers/net/ , missing EXPERIMENTAL in menus
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On Fri, 31 Aug 2007, Randy Dunlap wrote:

> On Thu, 19 Jul 2007 23:05:57 +0100 Simon Arlott wrote:
>
> > On 19/07/07 17:19, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
> > > On Thu, 19 Jul 2007, Randy Dunlap wrote:
> > >> I think that Stefan means a patch to the kconfig source code,
> > >> not the the Kconfig files.  Good luck.  I'd still like to see it.
> > >
> > > yes, i understand what he wanted now.  as a first step (that
> > > theoretically shouldn't change any behaviour), i'd patch the Kconfig
> > > structure to add a new attribute ("maturity") which would be allowed
> > > to be set to *exactly one* of a pre-defined set of values (say,
> > > OBSOLETE, DEPRECATED, EXPERIMENTAL, and STILLBLEEDING).  and that's
> > > it, nothing more.
> > >
> > > don't try to do anything with any of that just yet, just add the
> > > infrastructure to support the (optional) association of a maturity
> > > level with a config option.  that's step one.
> >
> > What about something like this? I'm not sure if the addition to sym_init
> > is desirable... I also had to prefix _ to the name for now otherwise it
> > conflicts badly with the current symbols. It probably should stop
> > "depends on _BROKEN" etc. too.

i'm sure i'm going to get shouted down here, but i really disagree
with "BROKEN" being considered a "maturity level".  IMHO, things like
EXPERIMENTAL, DEPRECATED and OBSOLETE represent maturity levels, for
what i think are obvious reasons.

something like BROKEN, though, has *nothing* to do with maturity.  a
feature can be any of those maturity levels, and simultaneously be
BROKEN.  i consider BROKEN to be what i call a "status", and different
status levels might be the default of normal, or KIND_OF_FLAKY or
TOTALLY_BORKED -- that's where BROKEN would fit in.

*please* don't start mixing these different attributes.  it's just
going to make an irreversible mess of things.  leave BROKEN out of
this for the time being.

rday
-- 
========================================================================
Robert P. J. Day
Linux Consulting, Training and Annoying Kernel Pedantry
Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA

http://crashcourse.ca
========================================================================
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