Re: [PATCH 08/23] kconfig: add 'macro' keyword to support user-defined function

From: Ulf Magnusson
Date: Fri Feb 16 2018 - 18:51:54 EST


On Fri, Feb 16, 2018 at 02:49:31PM -0500, Nicolas Pitre wrote:
> On Sat, 17 Feb 2018, Masahiro Yamada wrote:
>
> > Now, we got a basic ability to test compiler capability in Kconfig.
> >
> > config CC_HAS_STACKPROTECTOR
> > bool
> > default $(shell $CC -Werror -fstack-protector -c -x c /dev/null -o /dev/null)
> >
> > This works, but it is ugly to repeat this long boilerplate.
> >
> > We want to describe like this:
> >
> > config CC_HAS_STACKPROTECTOR
> > bool
> > default $(cc-option -fstack-protector)
> >
> > It is straight-forward to implement a new function, but I do not like
> > to hard-code specialized functions like this. Hence, here is another
> > feature to add functions from Kconfig files.
> >
> > A user-defined function can be defined as a string type symbol with
> > a special keyword 'macro'. It can be referenced in the same way as
> > built-in functions. This feature was also inspired by Makefile where
> > user-defined functions are referenced by $(call func-name, args...),
> > but I omitted the 'call' to makes it shorter.
> >
> > The macro definition can contain $(1), $(2), ... which will be replaced
> > with arguments from the caller.
> >
> > Example code:
> >
> > config cc-option
> > string
> > macro $(shell $CC -Werror $(1) -c -x c /dev/null -o /dev/null)
>
> I think this syntax for defining a macro shouldn't start with the
> "config" keyword, unless you want it to be part of the config symbol
> space and land it in .config. And typing it as a "string" while it
> actually returns y/n (hence a bool) is also strange.
>
> What about this instead:
>
> macro cc-option
> bool $(shell $CC -Werror $(1) -c -x c /dev/null -o /dev/null)
>
> This makes it easier to extend as well if need be.
>
>
> Nicolas

I haven't gone over the patchset in detail yet and might be missing
something here, but if this is just meant to be a textual shorthand,
then why give it a type at all?

Do you think a simpler syntax like this would make sense?

macro cc-option "$(shell $CC -Werror $(1) -c -x c /dev/null -o /dev/null)"

That's the most general version, where you could use it for other stuff
besides $(shell ...) as well, just to keep parity.

You could then always just expand $() as a string, and maybe spit out
"n" and "y" in the cases Linus suggested for $(shell ...). The existing
logic for constant symbols should then take care of converting that into
a tristate value where appropriate.

If you go with that and want to support $() outside quotes, then

$(foo)

would just be a shorthand for

"$(foo)"

Are there any cases where something more advanced than that might be
warranted (e.g., macros that expand to complete expressions)? It seems
pretty nice and nonmagical otherwise.

Cheers,
Ulf