linux-kernel - Re: dealing with excessive includes

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Date:	Mon, 23 Oct 2006 09:31:34 -0700 (PDT)
From:	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...l.org>
To:	Geert Uytterhoeven <geert@...ux-m68k.org>
cc:	Andi Kleen <ak@...e.de>, Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@...otime.net>,
	Stefan Richter <stefanr@...6.in-berlin.de>,
	Al Viro <viro@....linux.org.uk>,
	Alexey Dobriyan <adobriyan@...il.com>,
	Linux Kernel Development <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	linux-arch@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: dealing with excessive includes

On Mon, 23 Oct 2006, Geert Uytterhoeven wrote:
> > 
> > We have tons of issues that depend on config variables and architecture 
> > details. 
> 
> Indeed, so the config variables and architecture details should be handled in
> the include files, not in the (multiple) users of those include files.

The point is - _verifying_ that is actually hard.

If some inline function depends on a particular header, you'll have a hard 
time checking for that if there's an #ifdef around it. Which is not 
uncommon, we have things like:

	#ifdef CONFIG_PROCFS
	.. number of inline functions ..
	#else
	#define function1(a,b,c) do { } while (0)
	...
	#endif

so I'm just saying that "just compile it" is _not_ a way of verifying that 
the header file is complete - because it may well be complete for the 
particular config you're testing, but not for some other.

So this is a hard problem. If it was easy, we'd not _have_ the problem in 
the first place.

		Linus
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