Re: [PATCH v2 2/2] arm64: Kconfig.platforms: Group NXP platforms together

From: Olof Johansson
Date: Thu Sep 15 2022 - 19:57:21 EST


On Thu, Sep 15, 2022 at 1:52 PM Florian Fainelli <f.fainelli@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On 9/15/22 09:08, Olof Johansson wrote:
> > On Mon, Aug 29, 2022 at 10:38:29AM -0700, Florian Fainelli wrote:
> >> Group the three NXP platforms under an ARCH_NXP menuconfig symbol to
> >> make make selection of similar vendor SoCs visually nicer.
> >>
> >> Signed-off-by: Florian Fainelli <f.fainelli@xxxxxxxxx>
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > While these are convenient if they're done right from the beginning, the result
> > of adding a new dependency like this is that old defconfigs stop working if you
> > just go with the default.
> >
> > Was there a reason to group these now and cause this config churn for
> > downstream users?
>
> No reason to cause churn, and no specific reason other than visually and
> logically group options from the same vendors. I had clearly not
> anticipated the defconfig breakage, too bad that Kconfig does not allow
> menuconfig items to be enabled by default, or does it?

My local workflow is normally that I update my trees, then run a "make
oldconfig" and go with the defaults on new options. When I do that,
the layerscape arch option drops off, which turned out to be
unfortunate since it was the machine I was running on.

It's less of an issue if you use an in-tree defconfig (presuming they
get updated). I worry that distros will have similar issues if they
supply their own config.

Again, this is a one-time thing but it's easier for everybody if we
find ways to avoid them. Giving these new groups a "default y" might
not help either, since that would need to come off at some point, and
at that time the same issue will arise.


-Olof