Re: [GIT PULL for v7.4] media updates

[Sakari Ailus <sakari.ailus@linux.intel.com>]

Hi Linus, Mauro,

On Mon, Oct 26, 2026 at 07:34:12AM -1000, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> On Sat, 24 Oct 2026 at 06:51, Mauro Carvalho Chehab
> <mchehab+huawei@kernel.org> wrote:
> > Sakari Ailus (60):
> >       media: Don't hide I²C or SPI drivers by default
> 
> This needs to be fixed some way.
> 
> The kernel config is asking about ridiculous things that no sane user
> can know the answer to. And that change has made it worse.
> 
> Asking a user for random media drivers by chip ID is *NOT* ok. It
> needs to be hidden some way. If the old way didn't work, some new way
> needs to happen.
> 
> Guys, the kernel config phase is already *the* most annoying thing for
> people trying to build their own kernel. Don't make it worse by asking
> questions that make no sense to a normal user.

The patch in question puts camera sensors and related chips in line with
how the rest of the drivers are selected elsewhere.

The reason why I wrote the patch was that Arch Linux kernel missed enabling
these drivers, which given how the MEDIA_HIDE_ANCILLARY_SUBDRV option
worked before the patch was to be expected at some point (rather it's a
small miracle no-one had complained about this earlier). Raw camera sensors
are quite common in laptops these days and the only way to enable compiling
them before my patch was to enable CONFIG_EXPERT first.

I guess we could have an option to compile pretty much all media drivers as
modules (it may be hard to draw a line) and then require CONFIG_EXPERT to
allow choosing amongst them. I'm not sure I like that idea much though.

I wonder what others think.

Also cc Hans and Laurent.

-- 
Kind regards,

Sakari Ailus