why don't top-level menu entries have help info?

why don't top-level menu entries have help info?

[Robert P. J. Day]

  i'd be surprised if this hasn't come up before, but would it be hard
to add a facility to Kconfig so that "menu" entries have some help
info?

  after i run "make menuconfig" and i'm sitting at the main menu,
there's nothing to help me out in understanding what any of those
choices might mean.

  i might see "Instrumentation Support" and wonder just what that is,
but if i ask for help (which is, as you can see, clearly available
at the bottom of the config screen), i get nothing meaningful, just
the generic README.

  i think it would be helpful if those entries also supported help
info.  just my $0.02.

rday

-- 
========================================================================
Robert P. J. Day
Linux Consulting, Training and Annoying Kernel Pedantry
Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA

http://fsdev.net/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page
========================================================================

Re: why don't top-level menu entries have help info?

[Sam Ravnborg]

Added Roman Zippel to cc - he is kconfig maintainer,

	Sam

On Mon, May 07, 2007 at 03:54:13PM -0400, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
> 
>   i'd be surprised if this hasn't come up before, but would it be hard
> to add a facility to Kconfig so that "menu" entries have some help
> info?
> 
>   after i run "make menuconfig" and i'm sitting at the main menu,
> there's nothing to help me out in understanding what any of those
> choices might mean.
> 
>   i might see "Instrumentation Support" and wonder just what that is,
> but if i ask for help (which is, as you can see, clearly available
> at the bottom of the config screen), i get nothing meaningful, just
> the generic README.
> 
>   i think it would be helpful if those entries also supported help
> info.  just my $0.02.
> 
> rday
> 
> -- 
> ========================================================================
> Robert P. J. Day
> Linux Consulting, Training and Annoying Kernel Pedantry
> Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA
> 
> http://fsdev.net/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page
> ========================================================================
> -
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Re: why don't top-level menu entries have help info?

[Jan Engelhardt]

>On Mon, May 07, 2007 at 03:54:13PM -0400, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
>> 
>>   i'd be surprised if this hasn't come up before, but would it be hard
>> to add a facility to Kconfig so that "menu" entries have some help
>> info?

Currently, you have to (needlessy) enter the MD menu for example and
*in there* read the help text of CONFIG_MD, then decide if you want
it or not. I hope my use-menuconfig-objects patches help this issue
a bit ... not only avoiding to enter it, but also making the help
text available in the upper level. Take CONFIG_EMBEDDED, it DTRTs.

I do not think it will be too helpful to have help texts on menu, for
the "important" Kconfig objects (config, choice, menuconfig) should
have it - and they have it.

>>   after i run "make menuconfig" and i'm sitting at the main menu,
>> there's nothing to help me out in understanding what any of those
>> choices might mean.
>> 
>>   i might see "Instrumentation Support" and wonder just what that is,
>> but if i ask for help (which is, as you can see, clearly available
>> at the bottom of the config screen), i get nothing meaningful, just
>> the generic README.
>> 
>>   i think it would be helpful if those entries also supported help
>> info.  just my $0.02.

Jan
--