Re: [PATCH 2/2] Enable 'make CONFIG_FOO=y oldconfig'

[Emmanuel Deloget <emmanuel.deloget@efixo.com>]

On 08/10/2011 06:33 PM, David Woodhouse wrote:
> On Wed, 2011-08-10 at 10:34 -0400, Arnaud Lacombe wrote:
>> your point being ? I might as well tell you that I find the current
>> behavior of 'all*.config' just as broken wrt. to dependency
>> management.
> You might indeed. And I would find that commentary just as irrelevant
> and unhelpful.
>
>>> If you have nothing relevant to say, just don't say anything.
>>>
>> maybe you can come with a detailed description of your proposal's
>> behavior, including how to manage case like this, instead of just
>> throwing patch around ?
> How's this for a definition:
>
> "The behaviour for unsettable (or unclearable) options shall be exactly
> like it already is if you put them in all*.config, or if you manually
> edit the .config file and run 'make oldconfig', as people have been
> doing for years. There is nothing new to see here."
>
>> If I do:
>>
>> # make CONFIG_WIRELESS_EXT=y allnoconfig
>>
>> I expect either a success or an error, not a silent discard. And
>> *yes*, the problem already exists with "all*.config".
> [dwmw2@i7 linux-2.6]$ make CONFIG_WIRELESS_EXT=y allnoconfig
> scripts/kconfig/conf --allnoconfig Kconfig
> #
> # Could not set CONFIG_WIRELESS_EXT=y; perhaps it has unmet dependencies?
> #
> #
> # configuration written to .config
> #
>

I understand that my question is indeed neither wanted nor clever, but 
what's the point of trying to support "make CONFIG_FOO=y"?

Will we be expected to type a 42 meters long command line to compile the 
kernel instead of doing a menuconfig in the foreseable future? (and 
between typos, unmet dependencies and the myriad of other possible 
errors, I'm not sure I'll get more free time).

I don't get it. If the goal is to help the kernel hackers and if it 
really helps them it might be a thing to do - it might prove useful for 
very simple CONFIG_ options but I'm not sure this will stay true for the 
general case.

Best regards,

-- Emmanuel