On Tue, 4 Nov 1997, Linus Torvalds wrote:
>
>
> On Tue, 4 Nov 1997, Erik Andersen wrote:
> >
> > Here it is:
> >
> > ftp://ftp.shout.net/pub/users/mec/patch/config-smp.2161
> >
> > This updates my previous patch, config-smp-2154. There are no
> > substantial changes.
>
> Note that the principal reason why CONFIG_SMP isn't an option is that it
> affects too much. It means that if you re-make the config file,
> _everything_ gets recompiled. It _used_ to be a config option, but I
> removed it because of this problem.
>
> The only way I would like a CONFIG_SMP would be if the config process
> itself was made smarter, and did:
>
> - separate config files (according to some simple rule). Instead of doing
>
> #include <linux/config.h>
>
> we'd do
>
> #include <config/smp.h>
> #include <config/scsi.h>
> ...
>
> (maybe 10 different config files - very few files would care about more
> than one or two)
>
> - better CONFIG_XXX sanity checking that knew about the rules. Right now
> "make dep" can warn when somebody uses a CONFIG option without
> including the config.h file. If the above is done, then mkdep.c also
> needs to be smarter.
>
> This could be done by selecting the config filename by looking at the
> name of the config option itself and making that a rule. For example:
>
> CONFIG_SCSI_AHA1770 /* CONFIG_SCSI_ prefix -> <config/scsi.h>
> CONFIG_FS_MSDOS /* CONFIG_FS_ prefix -> <config/fs.h>
> ...
>
> This way mkdep.c and the config scripts themselves would be able to
> determine which config file is implied by which config option.
>
> In short, I think that we need a more clever config setup, and before we
> have that I don't want to see CONFIG_SMP as an option.
>
> Linus
>