On 5/8/07, Jeff Garzik  wrote:

quoted text
> Satyam Sharma wrote:

> > Yes, mixing select and depends is a recipe for build disasters. Call

> > me a rabid fanatic, but I would in fact go as far as to say that this

> > whole "select" thing in the Kconfig process is one big BUG, and not a

> > feature. People are lazy by nature and would rather just "select" a

> > dependency for their config option than burden users with several

> > "depends".

>

> Tough, the kernel community has voted against you.

Heh ... I guess I appeared a trifle _too_ fanatic there, but I'm not.

That rant against it was actually more about controlling its

{ab-,mis-}use and rampant proliferation (even to cases where it is

inapplicable / avoidable) than removing it altogether. Especially,

when a developer is lazy / wrong and mixes select and depends in the

same dependency chain leading to errors.
> It makes far more sense to include a driver during kernel configuration,

quoted text
> and have that driver pull in its libraries via 'select'.  The lame

> alternative requires developers to know which libraries they need BEFORE

> picking their drivers, which is backwards and requires legwork on the

> part of the kernel developer.

(That bit about a developer _knowing_ which libraries to select

manually before selecting a driver is not really true, you can "?" on

a config item and get all its "depends" and "select" dependencies

anyway -- and it requires more leg work, yes, but then you'll never

have build failures either)
Still, I don't really disagree w.r.t. "select"ing libraries, as long

as we're careful to limit them to _only_ libraries.

-

unsubscribe notice
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in

the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org

More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html

Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/