Re: [PATCH] AT91: add AT91SAM9X5 dummy configuration variable

[Jean-Christophe PLAGNIOL-VILLARD]

On 11:23 Mon 04 Jul     , Nicolas Ferre wrote:
> Le 02/07/2011 11:49, Arnd Bergmann :
> > On Wednesday 29 June 2011 17:24:42 Nicolas Ferre wrote:
> >>> Here are a few questions:
> >>> i) The drivers you're willing to send, are those for Atmel's IPs or are
> >>>       the IPs sourced from some other company ?
> >>> ii) Even if they are Atmel-specific, do you see the possibility of Atmel
> >>>       licensing them ?
> >>> iii) Does your driver current depend on asm/ or mach/ headers ?
> >>> iv) Is there a generic header which you could use instead of asm/ mach/ ?
> >>
> >> I just want to hide drivers that are not relevant for others: I have the feeling
> >> that it is a good practice. This tiny patch will ease this during my publication
> >> flow. Do you seriously care?
> > 
> > I think Felipe is right on this one, but both views are common in the kernel
> > today: Some people want dependencies to mean "you cannot build this driver
> > unless the dependencies are fulfilled", others like them more broadly to
> > mean "there is no point to ever enable this driver because I know you won't
> > need it".
> > 
> > Both views are understandable, but I favor the first one because
> > 
> > * it's the more common view these days and we should be consistent
> > 
> > * it exposes drivers to more build testing. If something changes in
> >   the kernel that exposes new warnings in your driver or causes a
> >   build error, that is more likely to get fixed when more people
> >   find it by doing allyesconfig or randconfig builds.
> > 
> > * If there is an actual build dependency between the driver and the
> >   platform that causes you to need the explicit Kconfig depends, that
> >   is in many cases a hint that the driver author is doing something
> >   wrong, like hardcoding MMIO addresses or referencing custom
> >   symbols exported by the platform.
> > 
> > I don't think anyone really objects your patch to introduce the extra
> > Kconfig symbol, but I'd hope that we can eventually get a consensus
> > on the idea that you shouldn't use Kconfig dependencies based on
> > whether a driver is relevant or not.
> 
> Arnd, Felipe,
> 
> You have convinced me.
> But I will have to remove the other dependencies that I mentioned before
> in the thread.
> 
> We can drop this patch.
I prefer to hide the platform specific driver other wise we will have a huge
menu entry in Kconfig with unrelated drivers that can not be used at all on
the selected mach

This is really annoying

Best Regards,
J.
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