linux/Documentation/kbuild/Kconfig.recursion-issue-02
Luis R. Rodriguez 1c199f2878 kbuild: document recursive dependency limitation / resolution
Recursive dependency issues with kconfig are unavoidable due to
some limitations with kconfig, since these issues are recurring
provide a hint to the user how they can resolve these dependency
issues and also document why such limitation exists.

While at it also document a bit of future prospects of ways to
enhance Kconfig, including providing formal semantics and evaluation
of use of a SAT solver. If you're interested in this work or prospects
of it check out the kconfig-sat project wiki [0] and mailing list [1].

[0] http://kernelnewbies.org/KernelProjects/kconfig-sat
[1] https://groups.google.com/d/forum/kconfig-sat

Cc: Geert Uytterhoeven <geert@linux-m68k.org>
Cc: James Bottomley <jbottomley@odin.com>
Cc: Josh Triplett <josh@joshtriplett.org>
Cc: Paul Bolle <pebolle@tiscali.nl>
Cc: Herbert Xu <herbert@gondor.apana.org.au>
Cc: Takashi Iwai <tiwai@suse.de>
Cc: "Yann E. MORIN" <yann.morin.1998@free.fr>
Cc: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
Cc: Mate Soos <soos.mate@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Luis R. Rodriguez <mcgrof@suse.com>
Signed-off-by: Michal Marek <mmarek@suse.com>
2015-10-08 15:36:16 +02:00

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# Cumulative Kconfig recursive issue
# ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
#
# Test with:
#
# make KBUILD_KCONFIG=Documentation/kbuild/Kconfig.recursion-issue-02 allnoconfig
#
# The recursive limitations with Kconfig has some non intuitive implications on
# kconfig sematics which are documented here. One known practical implication
# of the recursive limitation is that drivers cannot negate features from other
# drivers if they share a common core requirement and use disjoint semantics to
# annotate those requirements, ie, some drivers use "depends on" while others
# use "select". For instance it means if a driver A and driver B share the same
# core requirement, and one uses "select" while the other uses "depends on" to
# annotate this, all features that driver A selects cannot now be negated by
# driver B.
#
# A perhaps not so obvious implication of this is that, if semantics on these
# core requirements are not carefully synced, as drivers evolve features
# they select or depend on end up becoming shared requirements which cannot be
# negated by other drivers.
#
# The example provided in Documentation/kbuild/Kconfig.recursion-issue-02
# describes a simple driver core layout of example features a kernel might
# have. Let's assume we have some CORE functionality, then the kernel has a
# series of bells and whistles it desires to implement, its not so advanced so
# it only supports bells at this time: CORE_BELL_A and CORE_BELL_B. If
# CORE_BELL_A has some advanced feature CORE_BELL_A_ADVANCED which selects
# CORE_BELL_A then CORE_BELL_A ends up becoming a common BELL feature which
# other bells in the system cannot negate. The reason for this issue is
# due to the disjoint use of semantics on expressing each bell's relationship
# with CORE, one uses "depends on" while the other uses "select". Another
# more important reason is that kconfig does not check for dependencies listed
# under 'select' for a symbol, when such symbols are selected kconfig them
# as mandatory required symbols. For more details on the heavy handed nature
# of select refer to Documentation/kbuild/Kconfig.select-break
#
# To fix this the "depends on CORE" must be changed to "select CORE", or the
# "select CORE" must be changed to "depends on CORE".
#
# For an example real world scenario issue refer to the attempt to remove
# "select FW_LOADER" [0], in the end the simple alternative solution to this
# problem consisted on matching semantics with newly introduced features.
#
# [0] http://lkml.kernel.org/r/1432241149-8762-1-git-send-email-mcgrof@do-not-panic.com
mainmenu "Simple example to demo cumulative kconfig recursive dependency implication"
config CORE
tristate
config CORE_BELL_A
tristate
depends on CORE
config CORE_BELL_A_ADVANCED
tristate
select CORE_BELL_A
config CORE_BELL_B
tristate
depends on !CORE_BELL_A
select CORE