Re: Shouldn't kconfig defaults match recommendations in help text?

[Jesper Juhl]

On Tue, 24 Aug 2004, Mikael Pettersson wrote:

> Jesper Juhl writes:
>  > [quote]
>  > 
>  > The processor's performance-monitoring counters are special-purpose
>  > global registers. This option adds support for virtual per-process
>  > performance-monitoring counters which only run when the process
>  > to which they belong is executing. This improves the accuracy of
>  > performance measurements by reducing "noise" from other processes.
>  > 
>  > Say Y.
>  > 
>  >   Virtual performance counters support (PERFCTR_VIRTUAL) [N/y/?] (NEW)
>  > 
>  > [/quote]
>  > 
>  > 
>  > I just picked the above randomly, there are several other cases like it.
>  > 
>  > The comment clearly makes a recommendation that the user enables (in this 
>  > case) the option, yet the default is the exact opposite. What is the point 
>  > in that?
>  > I don't see anything but confusion amongst users as the result of such 
>  > inconsistency.
> 
> This particular mismatch occurs because the Kconfig entry
> doesn't have a "default" line, so Kconfig defaults to "n".
> 
> It makes little sense to disable PERFCTR_VIRTUAL when
> PERFCTR is enabled, so providing a "default y" for
> PERFCTR_VIRTUAL is the right thing to do.
> (It's an option because the design allows several
> independent high-level services on top of the low-level
> code. Currently there's only one high-level service in
> 2.6-mm, but with several it's reasonable to allow users
> to enable only those they actually want.)
> 
I had not investigated it in detail since it was simply one randomly 
picked example out of several, but thank you for the detailed explanation.


>  > Would patches to change default configuration choices to match the 
>  > recommendation given in the help text (if any) be acceptable? If not I'd 
>  > be interrested in the reasons why not.
>  > 
>  > If such patches are acceptable/wanted I'll be happy to supply them.
> 
> Feel free to do so :-)
> 
I'll post such patches in a short while. Sepperate mails, one pr patch 
changing one kconfig default pr patch.


--
Jesper Juhl
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