Re: [PATCH -next 2/2] kbuild: fix for updated LZ4 tool with the new streaming format

From: Sam Ravnborg <sam@ravnborg.org>
To: "Yann E. MORIN" <yann.morin.1998@free.fr>
Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>,
	"H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>, Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>,
	Kyungsik Lee <kyungsik.lee@lge.com>,
	Michal Marek <mmarek@suse.cz>,
	linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-kbuild@vger.kernel.org,
	x86@kernel.org, celinux-dev@lists.celinuxforum.org,
	linux-arm-kernel@lists.infradead.org, hyojun.im@lge.com,
	chan.jeong@lge.com, raphael.andy.lee@gmail.com,
	Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>, Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>,
	Russell King <rmk@arm.linux.org.uk>,
	Borislav Petkov <bp@alien8.de>,
	Florian Fainelli <florian@openwrt.org>,
	Yann Collet <yann.collet.73@gmail.com>,
	Chanho Min <chanho.min@lge.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH -next 2/2] kbuild: fix for updated LZ4 tool with the new streaming format
Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2013 20:04:08 +0200	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20130716180408.GA19863@merkur.ravnborg.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <201307161008.07643.yann.morin.1998@free.fr>

On Tue, Jul 16, 2013 at 10:08:07AM +0200, Yann E. MORIN wrote:
> Andrew, All,
> 
> On Tuesday 16 July 2013 09:56:11 Andrew Morton wrote:
> > On Tue, 16 Jul 2013 00:47:27 -0700 Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> wrote:
> > > On Mon, 15 Jul 2013 15:08:20 -0700 "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com> wrote:
> > > > On 07/15/2013 03:03 PM, Andrew Morton wrote:
> [--SNIP--]
> > > > We keep running over the need to be able to have kconfig run tests on
> > > > the build system (for toolchain support or for optional tools needed);
> > > > running them in the Makefiles (i.e. at Kbuild time) is simply too late.
> > > > 
> > > 
> > > Would it make sense to extend Kconfig's `depends'?
> > > 
> > > 	depends on $(shell-command)
> > > 
> > > I don't know how practical that would be to implement...
> 
> I'm afraid this will get rather ugly and not trivial.
> 
> Can we mix 'depends on SYMBOL' and 'depends on $(command)' ?
> Can we mix both in a boolean expression such as 'depends on SYMBOL
> && $(command)' ?
> 
> What would be the condition for evaluating the dependency rule? Evaluation
> at Kconfig read-time might not be enough, given this construct:
> 
>     config FOO
>         depends on $(foo)
>     comment "'foo' is missing, please install it"
>         depends on !$(foo)
> 
> Also, I believe Kconfig should stay a config-only language, without
> much esoteric features.

We could extend the symbol option part to retreive values from a binary.
Something like this:

config FOOBAR
        bool
        option exec="true"

FOOBAR would assume the value "y" if the command true has exit code == 0, otherwise "n".
And similar conversions for other types.

This only extendt Kconfig slightly - using an already present method to import
external values.

The drawback I see with this approach is that we may execute a lot of small programs
where the value is never used.
Implementing lazy evaluation of a symbol value will not be easy I think.

	Sam