Re: [kbuild-devel] Re: Why recovering from broken configs is too hard

Eric S. Raymond
2001-05-04T07:47:00Z

Albert D. Cahalan <acahalan@cs.uml.edu>:
> Procedure:
>
> 1. throw out all junk symbols (could try spell checking first)
> 2. mark non-default settings as read-only
> 3. add missing symbols as needed to meet constraints
> 4. add any additional missing symbols
> 5. mutate the config until it works... user may ^C when bored

You can't be serious. You invite the poor user to sit through an
indefinite, unpredictable, and *large* number of mutation passes
hoping the stupid search will trip over a solution? That's a far worse
waste of their time than telling them to correct by hand in the
exceedingly rare cases that would be necessary, in my considered
opinion.

A more egregious case of using a bazooka to swat a fly I've seldom seen.
Can we restore some sense of *proportion* here?
--
Eric S. Raymond

Rifles, muskets, long-bows and hand-grenades are inherently democratic
weapons. A complex weapon makes the strong stronger, while a simple
weapon -- so long as there is no answer to it -- gives claws to the
weak.
-- George Orwell, "You and the Atom Bomb", 1945