From: Julian Braha <julianbraha@gmail.com>
To: nathan@kernel.org, nsc@kernel.org, corbet@lwn.net,
skhan@linuxfoundation.org
Cc: arnd@arndb.de, stefan.hengelein@fau.de,
linux-kbuild@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
linux-doc@vger.kernel.org, nico@fluxnic.net,
officialnaumansabir@gmail.com, rdunlap@infradead.org,
vegard.nossum@oracle.com, kees@kernel.org, tj@kernel.org,
Julian Braha <julianbraha@gmail.com>
Subject: [PATCH] Documentation: warn users not to use select on choice options in Kconfig
Date: Wed, 15 Jul 2026 23:01:49 +0100 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20260715220149.48700-1-julianbraha@gmail.com> (raw)
Hengelein's master thesis about Kconfig from 2015 wrote that 'select'
does not work on member options inside of a 'choice'.
So I've re-implemented his check as part of kconfirm:
https://github.com/julianbraha/kconfirm
and discovered several instances of these dead selects in use, and
fixing them is not always trivial. For example, see:
https://lore.kernel.org/all/a3b7a752-8cc4-492a-bb62-43121b852c41@app.fastmail.com/
Let's add a warning to the documentation (a place where developers
are more likely to see it than a master's thesis...)
Signed-off-by: Julian Braha <julianbraha@gmail.com>
---
Documentation/kbuild/kconfig-language.rst | 5 +++++
1 file changed, 5 insertions(+)
diff --git a/Documentation/kbuild/kconfig-language.rst b/Documentation/kbuild/kconfig-language.rst
index d9338407c1c6..ab2822d7ca1c 100644
--- a/Documentation/kbuild/kconfig-language.rst
+++ b/Documentation/kbuild/kconfig-language.rst
@@ -164,6 +164,11 @@ applicable everywhere (see syntax).
That will limit the usefulness but on the other hand avoid
the illegal configurations all over.
+ select should also not be used on the member options of a choice.
+ Selecting a choice option will do nothing (dead code). Instead,
+ consider making these a dependency, or using the defaults of the
+ choice to enable the member option when it's needed.
+
If "select" <symbol> is followed by "if" <expr>, <symbol> will be
selected by the logical AND of the value of the current menu symbol
and <expr>. This means, the lower limit can be downgraded due to the
--
2.54.0
reply other threads:[~2026-07-15 22:02 UTC|newest]
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