Re: [PATCH] [net-next] ARM: orion: fix PHYLIB dependency

Andrew Lunn
2017-02-09T16:43:50Z

On Thu, Feb 09, 2017 at 04:08:11PM +0100, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
> The newly introduced mdiobus_register_board_info() function is only available
> as part of PHYLIB, so we get a link error when we call that from a board while
> phylib is disabled:
>
> arch/arm/plat-orion/common.o: In function `orion_ge00_switch_init':
> common.c:(.init.text+0x6a4): undefined reference to `mdiobus_register_board_info'
>
> This adds a workaround that is made up of three parts:
>
> - in plat-orion, the function for declaring the switch is hidden without
> PHYLIB.
> - in mach-orion5x, the caller conditionally stubs out the call to
> the removed function, so we can still build other orion5x boards
> without PHYLIB
> - For the boards that actually declare the switch, we select PHYLIB
> explicitly from Kconfig if NETDEVICES is set. Without NETDEVICES,
> we cannot enable PHYLIB, but we also wouldn't need it.

Hi Arnd

Although all correct, would it not be simpler to just select PHYLIB
and NETDEVICES? These devices are all NAS boxes and WiFi access
points. What sense does it make to build a kernel without working
networking for these classes of devices?

Andrew