Re: [kbuild-devel] Re: CML2 design philosophy heads-up

Eric S. Raymond
2001-05-18T17:18:38Z

Arjan van de Ven <arjanv@redhat.com>:
> I hereby volunteer to maintain at least make oldconfig and make config,
> and perhaps make menuconfig.

That's the easy part; the CML1 config code may be ugly and broken, but
at least it's relatively stable. What you'd also have to do is maintain an
entire CML1 ruleset in parallel with the canonical CML2 one. That's
the hard part.

I've been keeping the CML2 ruleset synced with CML1 for a year now.
It's been an ugly, nasty, horrible job -- *much* nastier, by an order
of magnitude, than designing and writing the CML2 engine. Going the
other direction would be worse. "Like chewing razor blades" is the
simile that leaps to mind.

(And no, dropping back to CML1 format for the masters wouldn't be an
option; it doesn't have the semantic strength to enable CML2's new
capabilities.)
--
Eric S. Raymond

Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government,
no matter how popular and respected, is the right of the citizens to
keep and bear arms. [...] the right of the citizens to bear arms is
just one guarantee against arbitrary government and one more safeguard
against a tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which
historically has proved to be always possible.
-- Hubert H. Humphrey, 1960