Re: [PATCH] kbuild: disable compile-test of kernel headers for now

From: Arnd Bergmann
Date: Fri Jul 19 2019 - 06:14:08 EST


On Fri, Jul 19, 2019 at 12:09 PM Masahiro Yamada
<yamada.masahiro@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> This compile-test started from the strong belief that (almost) all
> headers should be able to be compiled as a standalone unit, but this
> requirement seems to be just annoying.
>
> I believe compile-test of exported headers is good. On the other hand,
> in-kernel headers are not necessarily supposed to be always compilable.
> Actually, some headers are only included under a certain combination
> of CONFIG options, and that is definitely fine.
>
> This test is still causing false positive errors in randconfig.
> Moreover, newly added headers are compile-tested by default, sometimes
> they catch (not fatal) bugs, but often raise false positive errors to
> end up with making people upset.
>
> The merge window is closing shortly, so there is not much I can do.
> Disable it for now, and take a pause to re-think whether we should
> continue this or change the course.
>
> Signed-off-by: Masahiro Yamada <yamada.masahiro@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Acked-by: Arnd Bergmann <arnd@xxxxxxxx>

FWIW, I only saw occasional failures for one file (linux/iomap.h)
when doing many randconfig builds across x86, arm32 and arm64.
I think those are fixable, but disabling it for the 5.3 is clearly the safer
option.

Arnd