Re: [PATCH] mailbox: ARM_MHU_V3 should depend on ARM64

[Geert Uytterhoeven]

Hi Sudeep,

On Mon, Jun 3, 2024 at 3:39 PM Sudeep Holla <sudeep.holla@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Wed, May 29, 2024 at 01:36:42PM +0200, Geert Uytterhoeven wrote:
> > On Wed, May 29, 2024 at 12:13 PM Cristian Marussi
> > <cristian.marussi@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> > > On Wed, May 29, 2024 at 09:30:45AM +0200, Geert Uytterhoeven wrote:
> > > > The ARM MHUv3 controller is only present on ARM64 SoCs.  Hence add a
> > > > dependency on ARM64, to prevent asking the user about this driver when
> > > > configuring a kernel for a different architecture than ARM64.
> > >
> > > the ARM64 dependency was dropped on purpose after a few iterations of
> > > this series since, despite this being an ARM IP, it has really no technical
> > > dependency on ARM arch, not even the usual one on ARM AMBA bus, being this a
> > > platform driver, so it seemed an uneeded artificial restriction to impose...
> > > ...having said that, surely my live testing were performed only on arm64 models
> > > as of now.
> >
> > For that, we have COMPILE_TEST=y.
> >
> > > So, I am not saying that I am against this proposed fix but what is the
> > > issue that is trying to solve, have you seen any compilation error ? or
> > > is it just to avoid the user-prompting ?
> >
> > I did not see a compile error (I didn't enable it on any non-ARM
> > platform).
> >
> > But it is rather futile to ask the user about (thousands of) drivers
> > for hardware that cannot possibly be present on the system he is
> > configuring a kernel for.
>
> I am fine with this fix but I have seen quite opposite argument. That is
> not to add dependency if it is not strictly required.

Can you please point me to that reference?

> Also since you state that the fix is to avoid users of other archs being
> posed with the question that they may get annoyed or can't answer, I
> wonder if the right approach is to make this driver default "n" instead.

The driver already defaults to "n" (which is the default default ;-)

Thanks!

Gr{oetje,eeting}s,

                        Geert

-- 
Geert Uytterhoeven -- There's lots of Linux beyond ia32 -- geert@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But
when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that.
                                -- Linus Torvalds