Re: CML2-2.1.3 is available

Eric S. Raymond
2002-01-16T04:15:36Z

Rob Landley <landley@trommello.org>:
> Eric and I disagree on the behavior of "make autoprobe". He likes the
> concept of "freezing" symbols, which says if the autoprober detected a
> configuration setting, the question shouldn't show up and give you the
> opportunity to disagree. (Not confusing Aunt Tillie, with her LCSE from
> CompTIA (and apparently has recently moved in with Alan Cox), with questions
> that she's more likely to screw up than improve.)

Note, everyone else, that the freezing only happens on "make autoprobe".
The config.out that "make autoconfigure" writes is not frozen.

> Personally, I think that if you turn on "expert" mode, you should be
> able to override anything. I haven't complained much because there
> is an easy workaround: Although the autoprober puts the "frozen"
> flag on the symbols it finds, menuconfig doesn't save them out :).

Correction: menuconfig *does* save out frozen symbols, but it saves
them unfrozen.

> So just run menuconfig twice and you can edit everything that got
> autoprobed...

This "workaround" is entirely intentional.

> (Now the standard configuration DOES freeze, and therefore hide, the
> "which architecture am I building for" question. It would be nice
> if "make menuconfig" would let you do a cross-compile simply by
> selecting your architecture. I understand why this isn't supported
> though: to properly build most architectures other than X86, you
> have to apply patches to Linus's tree. And the make would have to
> tell gcc to cross-compile, which most gcc builds don't know how to
> do and the makefiles don't seem to support anyway...)

Actually, this kind of cross-configuration is already fully supported.
The normal way of calling the configurator, through the Makefile,
passes -D$(ARCH) -- but if you call it without an architecture symbol
frozen by command-line option, architecture will be the first question
you're asked.
--
Eric S. Raymond

All forms of government are pernicious, including good government.
-- Edward Abbey