2005-09-14 09:06:06

by Coywolf Qi Hunt

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: kbuild-permanently-fix-kernel-configuration-include-mess.patch added to -mm tree

On 9/14/05, [email protected] <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> The patch titled
>
> kbuild: permanently fix kernel configuration include mess.
>
> has been added to the -mm tree. Its filename is
>
> kbuild-permanently-fix-kernel-configuration-include-mess.patch
>
>
> From: Russell King <[email protected]>
>
> Include autoconf.h into every kernel compilation via the gcc command line
> using -imacros. This ensures that we have the kernel configuration
> included from the start, rather than relying on each file having #include
> <linux/config.h> as appropriate. History has shown that this is something
> which is difficult to get right.

Not all compilations need config.h included and this slows down gratuitously.
--
Coywolf Qi Hunt
http://sosdg.org/~coywolf/


2005-09-14 09:20:24

by Russell King

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: kbuild-permanently-fix-kernel-configuration-include-mess.patch added to -mm tree

On Wed, Sep 14, 2005 at 05:05:57PM +0800, Coywolf Qi Hunt wrote:
> On 9/14/05, [email protected] <[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> > The patch titled
> >
> > kbuild: permanently fix kernel configuration include mess.
> >
> > has been added to the -mm tree. Its filename is
> >
> > kbuild-permanently-fix-kernel-configuration-include-mess.patch
> >
> >
> > From: Russell King <[email protected]>
> >
> > Include autoconf.h into every kernel compilation via the gcc command line
> > using -imacros. This ensures that we have the kernel configuration
> > included from the start, rather than relying on each file having #include
> > <linux/config.h> as appropriate. History has shown that this is something
> > which is difficult to get right.
>
> Not all compilations need config.h included and this slows down gratuitously.

That is a small price to pay, rather than having to continually maintain
"does this file need config.h included" - which I think can conclusively
be shown to be a total lost cause. There are about 3450 configuration
include errors in the kernel as of -git last night.

Getting config.h includes wrong causes subtle bugs - for instance, one
file may be built with some feature enabled which changes a structure
size, and another filfe may be built with it disabled.

I put forward that maintaining correct config.h include across all
files is demonstratably impossible in such a large source base without
considerable work.

I also put forward that the percentage of compilations which do not need
config.h is small and probably realistically zero.

Therefore, I think that a small slowdown for the few (if any) files which
don't need linux/config.h including is a good tradeoff.

--
Russell King
Linux kernel 2.6 ARM Linux - http://www.arm.linux.org.uk/
maintainer of: 2.6 Serial core

2005-09-14 10:33:09

by Alan

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: kbuild-permanently-fix-kernel-configuration-include-mess.patch added to -mm tree

On Mer, 2005-09-14 at 10:20 +0100, Russell King wrote:
> That is a small price to pay, rather than having to continually maintain
> "does this file need config.h included" - which I think can conclusively
> be shown to be a total lost cause. There are about 3450 configuration
> include errors in the kernel as of -git last night.

I think your proposal makes sense. The alternative is to do a config
check each build for a while after the config pass and refuse to build
if the header check fails 8). That I suspect would rapidly see config.h
directly or indirectly in every file.

2005-09-14 17:23:44

by Sam Ravnborg

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: kbuild-permanently-fix-kernel-configuration-include-mess.patch added to -mm tree

> That is a small price to pay, rather than having to continually maintain
> "does this file need config.h included" - which I think can conclusively
> be shown to be a total lost cause. There are about 3450 configuration
> include errors in the kernel as of -git last night.
Depends on how you count...
If all .h files followed the rule - they should be selfcontained. In
other words they should all include what they need this is correct.

The correct figure is much less.
I did a check with defconfig for i386.
There are 7 .o files where config.h is not included - all are correct.
lib/errno.c, arch/ia386/boot/bootsect.S + a few more.
That was out of 983 .o files.

There will be no slowdown introducing -iinclude (or -imacros) keeping
these figures in mind.



find -name '.*.o.cmd' | xargs grep __KERNEL__ to find number of .o files
build.

added grep -l 'include/linux/config.h' to find .o files build and where
config-h was included. Then a simple diff..

Sam