Re: [PATCH 1/3] vfio/pci: Cleanup Kconfig

[Jason Gunthorpe <jgg@nvidia.com>]

On Tue, Jun 06, 2023 at 03:57:04PM -0600, Alex Williamson wrote:
> > Not really, maybe it creates a sysfs class, but it certainly doesn't
> > do anything useful unless there is a vfio driver also selected.
> 
> Sorry, I wasn't referring to vfio "core" here, I was thinking more
> along the lines of when we include the PCI or IOMMU subsystem there's
> a degree of base functionality included there regardless of what
> additional options or drivers are selected.  

Lots of other cases are just like VFIO where it is the subsystem core
that really doesn't do anything. Look at tpm, infiniband, drm, etc

> The current state is that we cannot build vfio-pci-core.ko without
> vfio-pci.ko, so there's always an in-kernel user.  

I think I might have done that, and it wasn't done for that reason.. I
just messed it up and didn't follow the normal pattern - and this
caused these troubles with the wrong/missing depends/selects.

I view following the usual pattern as more valuable than a one off fix
for what is really a systemic issue in kconfig. Which is why I made
the patch to align with how CONFIG_VFIO works :)

Jason