Re: IA64/simulators - Kconfig logic for drivers/*

[David Mosberger <davidm@napali.hpl.hp.com>]

>>>>> On Sat, 1 Nov 2003 22:41:07 -0800 (PST), "Noah J. Misch" <noah@caltech.edu> said:

  Noah> On Sun, 2 Nov 2003, Matthew Wilcox wrote:
  >> > Why not include drivers/Kconfig and scrap the individual subdirectory
  >> > includes, as i386 does?

  >> At that time, I hadn't done the work to create drivers/Kconfig ;-)
  >> The main problem for ia64 is the simulator stuff.  Maybe something like:

  >> if !IA64_HP_SIM
  >> source "drivers/Kconfig"
  >> endif

  >> if IA64_HP_SIM
  >> source "drivers/base/Kconfig"
  >> source "drivers/scsi/Kconfig"
  >> source "net/Kconfig"
  >> source "drivers/block/Kconfig"
  >> source "arch/ia64/hp/sim/Kconfig"
  >> endif

  Noah> I would guess that everyone who uses a simulator is a kernel
  Noah> developer or maybe an application developer.  I worry that the
  Noah> risk of hiding useful configs from simulator users by lax
  Noah> maintenance of that block of Kconfig logic exceeds the risk of
  Noah> those people trying to build a simulator kernel with all kinds
  Noah> of hardware drivers and finding that it doesn't work.  A
  Noah> quieter configuration is nice, however.  Hmmm.

I suspect it should be possible to do this much cleaner with the new
Kconfig system.  For example, if all PCI-dependent drivers really do
specify "depends on PCI" (or something equivalent), then a good
portion of the hopeless drivers would automagically go away from the
simulator configuration.  What's there now "works", but it clearly
could stand some modernization.

	--david