From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Roman Zippel Subject: Re: [PATCH 17/17] BLOCK: Make it possible to disable the block layer [try #2] Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2006 03:11:31 +0200 (CEST) Message-ID: References: <20060829115138.GA32714@infradead.org> <20060825142753.GK10659@infradead.org> <20060824213252.21323.18226.stgit@warthog.cambridge.redhat.com> <20060824213334.21323.76323.stgit@warthog.cambridge.redhat.com> <10117.1156522985@warthog.cambridge.redhat.com> <15945.1156854198@warthog.cambridge.redhat.com> <20060829122501.GA7814@infradead.org> <44F44639.90103@s5r6.in-berlin.de> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Cc: Christoph Hellwig , David Howells , linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Return-path: Received: from scrub.xs4all.nl ([194.109.195.176]:49113 "EHLO scrub.xs4all.nl") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S932226AbWH3BLp (ORCPT ); Tue, 29 Aug 2006 21:11:45 -0400 To: Stefan Richter In-Reply-To: <44F44639.90103@s5r6.in-berlin.de> Sender: linux-fsdevel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: linux-fsdevel.vger.kernel.org Hi, On Tue, 29 Aug 2006, Stefan Richter wrote: > If "select" cannot be fixed or is not en vogue for any other reason, the > configuration tools need to be improved otherwise, so that users are guided to > options like USB_STORAGE and IEEE1394_SBP2 when SCSI or other "foreign" > options were disabled. > > The kernel configuration is currently presented as a tree, although the > dependencies of config options are not a tree. That's were "select" helps. Actually dependencies are a tree and kconfig verifies that it's valid as well and that's there "select" can wreak havoc. select really creates a reverse dependency, i.e. the value of SCSI depends now on the USB_STORAGE value. This means now that all dependencies of the selected symbol have to be selected as well (either by the selecting symbol or by the selected symbol). With more complex dependencies this can quickly get out of hand in order to maintain a valid and correct dependency tree. That's why I'm not really happy about the current massive use of select and I'd rather find solutions with normal dependencies, which unfortunately isn't trivial, select OTOH was a simple hack. bye, Roman