Re: linux kernel conf 0.8

[Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@pobox.com>]

Sam Ravnborg wrote:
> But there is a good reason why they do it.
> Take a look at dirvers/video/Config.in for example.
> See the size of the big if's. They span several pages if not the whole file.
> Why they do this is simple. Only check for PCI once, and group all
> PCI stuff there.
> With the syntax Roman propose we see instead that _each_ config option
> check for PCI. Which is good IMHO.

That falls apart for multiple-bus drivers.

The way the current config files handle this seems reasonable...  for 
example drivers/net/ in fact _already_ splits things up by bus type to 
some extent.  But this is not a hard and fast rule, just easing some pain.


> But the whole argumentation boils down to something rahter simple:
> 1) Shall we group configuration files together
> 2) Shall we group related files together


This reminds me of another point:

An eventual goal is for people, mostly initial driver merges or vendors, 
to be able to add a simple driver without patching _any_ files.

Which implies that the equivalent of "source drivers/net/Config*" 
(wildcarding) in Roman's system would be useful.  Or maybe "source 
drivers/net" and it knows that when given a directory it should scan for 
all Config* files in that dir.

	Jeff