linux-kernel - Re: Smarter Kconfig help

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Date:   Thu, 21 Mar 2019 21:36:02 +0100
From:   Pavel Machek <pavel@....cz>
To:     Lucas Stach <l.stach@...gutronix.de>
Cc:     Russell King - ARM Linux admin <linux@...linux.org.uk>,
        linux-arm-kernel@...ts.infradead.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
        Peng Hao <peng.hao2@....com.cn>,
        Mark Rutland <mark.rutland@....com>,
        Andy Shevchenko <andy.shevchenko@...il.com>,
        Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>
Subject: Re: Smarter Kconfig help

On Wed 2019-03-06 10:45:52, Lucas Stach wrote:
> Hi Russell,
> 
> Am Dienstag, den 05.03.2019, 17:31 +0000 schrieb Russell King - ARM Linux admin:
> > Guys,
> > 
> > We need to be smarter when writing Kconfig help.  I'm just going
> > through updating my build trees with the results of 5.0 development,
> > and a number of the help texts are next to useless.  For example,
> > 
> > PVPANIC - is this something that should be enabled for a host or
> > guest kernel?  Answer: you have to read the driver code to find out.
> > 
> > IMX_IRQSTEER - which i.MX SoCs does this apply to?  The help text
> > just says:
> > 
> >   "Support for the i.MX IRQSTEER interrupt multiplexer/remapper."
> > 
> > which doesn't say which SoCs this should be enabled for - it turns
> > out that grepping for the driver's DT compatible string, none of
> > the 32-bit ARM cores have support for this, yet we still default
> > it to enabled there.  It seems the help text should at the very
> > least tell the user that this is not applicable to i.MX SoCs with
> > 32-bit ARM cores.
> > 
> > I'm sure there's many other instances of this... I suspect that
> > it's caused by review concentrating mostly on the technical aspects
> > of the code and the Kconfig help text just gets forgotten about.
> > 
> > Can we at least improve these two options please?
> 
> While I totally agree that the irqsteer driver should only default Y on
> 64bit i.MX SoCs, I'm not really sure what to do about the Kconfig help
> text.
> 
> Enumerating SoCs in the Kconfig of a IP block driver is always prone to
> get outdated. Just as the first example I've been able to come up with,
> the MMC_SDHCI_ESDHC_IMX help text says: "This selects the Freescale
> eSDHC/uSDHC controller support found on i.MX25, i.MX35 i.MX5x and
> i.MX6x.", while the same IP block is to be found on i.MX7 and various
> i.MX8.

"This selects the Freescale eSDHC/uSDHC controller support found on
i.MX25, i.MX35 i.MX5x, i.MX6x and later SoCs.".

Really, there are way too many silicon blocks, and you can't expect
Kconfig user to know them all...

Best regards,

									Pavel

-- 
(english) http://www.livejournal.com/~pavelmachek
(cesky, pictures) http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~pavel/picture/horses/blog.html

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