Re: [PATCH] make sparse headers self-compilable...

[Christopher Li <sparse@chrisli.org>]

On Sat, Aug 8, 2009 at 4:10 AM, Kamil Dudka<kdudka@redhat.com> wrote:
> On Friday 07 of August 2009 22:27:08 Kamil Dudka wrote:
>> attached is another fix for SPARSE headers improving their sanity. I am
>> also attaching a simple test for the dependency tracking of headers. It's
>> not enough generic and portable and therefore not really useful. Maybe
>> someone skilled in writing makefiles might want to include something like
>> that to the SPARSE Makefile as part of the 'check' target.

What is the significant of making every header file self compilable?
Unlike the kernel header files exported to user space, which usually
have self contained meaning. Most of these header file have tight interaction
with each other. I don't think it make sense for other sparse application
to just use one of the header file.

Enforcing each header file to be self compilable will result in a lot
of unnecessary include. Gcc needs to include "symbol.h" many times
just to skip over it. Take a look at pre-process.c. It is not exactly
trivial. It needs to scan the token to find out the end of the if
scope. In this case, it might be better just let other header
file depend on "symbol.h".

I want to heard what other people think about it too. I am a little bit
reluctant on this one.

Chris