[RFC] Simplifying kernel configuration for distro issues

Sam Ravnborg sam at ravnborg.org
Fri Jul 20 10:26:44 UTC 2012


> 
> But we'll first have to make 'select' to actually work, right? It 
> currently doesn't resolve the dependencies of the selected configs, so it 
> will just produce some very broken config.

We could restrict "select" to only select symbols with no dependencies,
or *exactly* the same dependencies as the symbol containing the select.

So we could have something like:

config FEDORA
	select WANT_TMPFS


config WANT_TMPFS
	bool

config TMPFS
	defbool y if WANT_TMPFS


This is a pattern used today in many places.
But fixing up all the current select XXX would not be trivial...
I have no idea how many of the select we have today that would fail
the above semantic restrictions - but I guess it is a lot.

We could also come up with something new like:

config FEDORA
	require TMPFS
	require EXT4 = m
	require EXT3 = y

This would set TMPS to y if TMPFS dependencies are met.
And EXT3 to y and EXT4 to m if their dependencies are met.

This should be more or less the same as setting the value to y/m
in the user interface, which is only possible if the value is visible.

	Sam




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