linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] Remove silentoldconfig from "make help"; fix kconfig/conf's help

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Date:   Fri, 5 Jan 2018 14:21:14 -0800
From:   Marc Herbert <Marc.Herbert@...el.com>
To:     Masahiro Yamada <yamada.masahiro@...ionext.com>
Cc:     Thiago Macieira <thiago.macieira@...el.com>,
        Josh Triplett <josh@...htriplett.org>,
        Guenter Roeck <groeck@...gle.com>,
        Wayne Boyer <wayne.boyer@...el.com>,
        Linux Kbuild mailing list <linux-kbuild@...r.kernel.org>,
        Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        Michal Marek <michal.lkml@...kovi.net>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] Remove silentoldconfig from "make help"; fix
 kconfig/conf's help

On 04/01/2018 09:21, Masahiro Yamada wrote:
> (+CC Michal's new address)
> 
> 2017-12-19 10:26 GMT+09:00 Marc Herbert <marc.herbert@...el.com>:
>> As explained by Michal Marek at https://lkml.org/lkml/2011/8/31/189
>> silentoldconfig has become a misnomer. It has become an internal
>> interface and "oldconfig" is just as silent now.
> 
> 
> Hmm, I'd like to be sure about your intention.

My main intention is to stop advertising the now internal silentoldconfig
target in the user interface. A secondary goal is to provide an accurate
background information in the commit message.

> "oldconfig" is not silent.  (nor is silentoldconfig).
> When it finds a new symbol, it will show a dialog
> to ask users to input a value.
>
> "olddefconfig" is really silent
> because it automatically sets new symbols to default.

I think "silent" is typically missing well-defined semantics (another appeal
to remove "silentoldconfig" from the user interface...) and I'm not sure
"silent" ever meant "non-interactive" as you just described here. I think
silent just meant "quiet(er)" here.

This commit message was purely based on Michal's message that I'm
referencing. He wrote there: "... nowadays oldconfig is silent as well"

I can change that part of the commit message to:

| As explained by Michal Marek at https://lkml.org/lkml/2011/8/31/189
| silentoldconfig has become a misnomer. It has become an internal
| interface and "oldconfig" is just as QUIET now.

... or to anything else you prefer.

> If you drop silentoldconfig help,
> the "Same as silentoldconfig" is not sensible.
> You need to update this line, too.

> I think "Same as oldconfig but ..." will be OK.

Agreed, thank you! I will also search for other occurrences.

> What do you mean by "oldconfig used to be more verbose" ?
> Did oldconfig change its behavior?
>
> Unless I am missing something, the current behavior of "oldconfig" has
> been the same at least since the beginning of the git era.

Again that's what Michal's message claimed in 2011. I don't know to which
even older era he was referring to.

It was already quite time consuming to understand and verify the subtle
nuances of the current state (which luckily still matches what Michal
reported 7 years ago), so for the even older past I just deferred to Michal.

Now I just checked out v2.6.12-rc2 (2005) and it looks like Michal was
right: oldconfig was much more verbose then; it was dumping the entire
.config file on stdout.

If you prefer I can keep referring to Michal's message but without
paraphrasing it at all; sticking to the description of the current
behaviours and not mentioning any possible past behaviour and saving all of
us the time spent doing archeology. Just let me know, thx!

-- 
Marc