Re: [PATCH] include/asm-generic/io.h: add dummy fuctions to support 'COMPILE_TEST' in 'asm-generic'.

From: Arnd Bergmann
Date: Fri Jul 05 2013 - 07:14:14 EST


On Friday 05 July 2013, Chen Gang F T wrote:
> Hello All:
>
> It seems 'asm-generic' dislikes 'mad users' (e.g allmodconfig,
> randconfig, and me).
>
> I guess the main reason is: 'asm-generic' thinks what mad users talk
> about is useless in real world, so it is just noisy.
>
> I can understand, at least what I talk about is not for urgent things.
> (maybe 'asm-generic' also thinks it not important either, every members
> have their own opinions).
>
> Next, I still use allmodconfig/randconfig for some architectures which I
> am interested in (and also for learning compilers), but I will skip all
> things which are related with 'asm-generic', since it dislikes me (a mad
> user).

As the asm-generic maintainer I think I have to clarify a few things:

* Build-time fixes for warnings and randconfig errors are good,
and you have sent a number of good bug fixes all over the kernel,
I definitely welcome getting more of those. In many cases the
fix is trivial and obvious, in other cases you need to know
much more of the background to understand what the underlying
problem is and why you should not just fix the symptom.

* You have made an (understandable) mistake with this particular
patch. It would have been nice if you had not made it, but I
can see that you are still learning about these things. There
is a fine line between what makes sense to be enabled as a
'compile test' and what should better be left disabled by
Kconfig.

* When experienced developers tell you that you are mistaken, you
need to make an effort to understand what the mistake was so you
can learn from it and not make the same mistake again. If you
make the same mistakes again, maintainers will get annoyed and
ignore you (or worse), which is not a good situation to be
in when you want to get your patches merged.

Arnd
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