From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1754490AbXD2AiQ (ORCPT ); Sat, 28 Apr 2007 20:38:16 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1754494AbXD2AiQ (ORCPT ); Sat, 28 Apr 2007 20:38:16 -0400 Received: from einhorn.in-berlin.de ([192.109.42.8]:47391 "EHLO einhorn.in-berlin.de" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1754490AbXD2AiP (ORCPT ); Sat, 28 Apr 2007 20:38:15 -0400 X-Envelope-From: stefanr@s5r6.in-berlin.de Message-ID: <4633E8EF.1080604@s5r6.in-berlin.de> Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2007 02:38:07 +0200 From: Stefan Richter User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.2) Gecko/20070408 SeaMonkey/1.1.1 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: "Robert P. J. Day" CC: Linux Kernel Mailing List Subject: Re: maturity levels: a first pass References: In-Reply-To: X-Enigmail-Version: 0.94.1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Robert P. J. Day wrote: > + This feature gives you the ability to de-select entire sets of > + kernel features based on how they've been tagged with the > + "maturity" directive. Why expose the end-user to implementation details like "been tagged with the 'maturity' directive"? ... > +config MATURITY_DEPRECATED > + bool "Display DEPRECATED features." ... Maybe you rather want bool "Allow to select DEPRECATED features." because MATURITY_DEPRECATED=N probably means "Do not allow to select DEPRECATED features" which implies that deprecated features will be deselected. In your wording, MATURITY_DEPRECATED=N would be just "Do not display DEPRECATED features" which is probably less than what you want it to be. That said, I don't know if the approach is going into the right direction. For example, the way you are starting it requires updates to all Kconfig UIs/scripts, to work correctly. Otherwise, users could select ACTIVATE_MATURITY but the tags would still be ignored. Another approach could be to - continue to use "config EXPERIMENTAL" and "depends on EXPERIMENTAL" and extend it for OBSOLETE, and if you cannot resist, for DEPRECATED, - extend interactive UIs like xconfig and menuconfig and oldconfig to display an EXPERIMENTAL sign alongside the title of an option which depends on EXPERIMENTAL, - delete occurrences of the string EXPERIMENTAL from titles of options and help texts, - vice versa for OBSOLETE, and if you cannot resist, for DEPRECATED. This does what you want while it keeps contents separate from presentation and avoids to extend the Kconfig language. A simple Kconfig language without presentational ballast allows for creation of a multitude of fine-tuned configurator UIs/scripts, which can be extended by all sorts of features, e.g. better support in dealing with obsolete configuration options. -- Stefan Richter -=====-=-=== -=-- ===-= http://arcgraph.de/sr/