linux-kernel - "mconf" and help texts

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Date:	Thu, 3 Jan 2008 11:15:48 +0100
From:	"Ph. Marek" <philipp.marek@...v.gv.at>
To:	zippel@...ux-m68k.org
Cc:	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: "mconf" and help texts

Hello everybody!

[[ Please keep me CC'ed. Thank you. ]]

I just tried looking at NF_CONNTRACK_MARK (menuconfig, in 2.6.23.12), and 
found it disallowed.

So I took a look at "Help", and saw that blob:

  Selected by: NETFILTER_XT_TARGET_CONNMARK && NET && INET && NETFILTER &&
     NETFILTER_XTABLES && (IP_NF_MANGLE || IP6_NF_MANGLE) && NF_CONNTRACK ||
     NETFILTER_XT_MATCH_CONNMARK && NET && INET && NETFILTER &&
     NETFILTER_XTABLES && NF_CONNTRACK || IP_NF_TARGET_CLUSTERIP && NET &&
     INET && NETFILTER && IP_NF_MANGLE && EXPERIMENTAL && NF_CONNTRACK_IPV4

That is a _bit_ unreadable.

Now breaking that into multiple lines would show me this:
  NETFILTER_XT_TARGET_CONNMARK && NET && INET && NETFILTER &&
     NETFILTER_XTABLES && (IP_NF_MANGLE || IP6_NF_MANGLE) && NF_CONNTRACK ||
  NETFILTER_XT_MATCH_CONNMARK && NET && INET && NETFILTER &&
     NETFILTER_XTABLES && NF_CONNTRACK || 
  IP_NF_TARGET_CLUSTERIP && NET && INET && NETFILTER && IP_NF_MANGLE &&
     EXPERIMENTAL && NF_CONNTRACK_IPV4

Is that correct? If yes, how about putting such line-breaks in the shown text?

Furthermore ... how about removing duplicate symbols from there?
A bit of editing shows me

      1 EXPERIMENTAL
      3 INET
      1 IP6_NF_MANGLE
      2 IP_NF_MANGLE
      1 IP_NF_TARGET_CLUSTERIP
      3 NET
      3 NETFILTER
      2 NETFILTER_XTABLES
      1 NETFILTER_XT_MATCH_CONNMARK
      1 NETFILTER_XT_TARGET_CONNMARK
      2 NF_CONNTRACK
      1 NF_CONNTRACK_IPV4

Now I wonder ... complete reductions of this might be a bit awful, but 
repeated 
	INET && ... ||
	INET && ... ||
	INET && ...
could surely be made shorter.

It would be nice (depending on your value of "nice", of course :-))
to see 
  NET && INET && NETFILTER &&
    NETFILTER_XT_TARGET_CONNMARK && NETFILTER_XTABLES && 
      (IP_NF_MANGLE || IP6_NF_MANGLE) && NF_CONNTRACK ||
  NETFILTER_XT_MATCH_CONNMARK && NETFILTER_XTABLES && NF_CONNTRACK || 
  IP_NF_TARGET_CLUSTERIP && IP_NF_MANGLE && EXPERIMENTAL && NF_CONNTRACK_IPV4

I'm not sure whether it would be worth the additional work to get
  NET && INET && NETFILTER &&
    ( NETFILTER_XTABLES && NF_CONNTRACK &&
      ( NETFILTER_XT_MATCH_CONNMARK && NETFILTER_XTABLES ) ||
      ( NETFILTER_XT_TARGET_CONNMARK && NF_CONNTRACK &&
        (IP_NF_MANGLE || IP6_NF_MANGLE)                     ) ||
    IP_NF_TARGET_CLUSTERIP && IP_NF_MANGLE && EXPERIMENTAL &&
      NF_CONNTRACK_IPV4

(if I translated that correctly, manually)

Would there be interest if I supplied some script (perl would be easiest for 
me) that tried to simplify such strings? Calling that from C wouldn't be 
nice, but acceptable for the occasional help text showing.

There has to be some expression parser for that ... could that be used? Where 
gets this string built?

As a side-node - I cannot get xconfig to work (pkg-config); is there some way 
in menuconfig to see why some config option is disallowed? The location tree 
shows some data ("-> Networking support (NET [=y])"), but not for all 
dependencies. [Does xconfig allow enabling them while seeing this option?]

Regards,

Phil
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