Re: [RFC PATCH 4/7] kconfig: support new special property shell=

[Ulf Magnusson <ulfalizer@gmail.com>]

On Mon, Feb 12, 2018 at 3:23 PM, Masahiro Yamada
<yamada.masahiro@socionext.com> wrote:
> 2018-02-12 23:21 GMT+09:00 Masahiro Yamada <yamada.masahiro@socionext.com>:
>> 2018-02-12 21:54 GMT+09:00 Ulf Magnusson <ulfalizer@gmail.com>:
>>> On Sun, Feb 11, 2018 at 09:42:09PM +0100, Ulf Magnusson wrote:
>>>> On Sun, Feb 11, 2018 at 9:29 PM, Ulf Magnusson <ulfalizer@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> > On Sun, Feb 11, 2018 at 6:56 PM, Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org> wrote:
>>>> >> Another case I mentioned before that I just want to make sure we don't
>>>> >> reintroduce the problem of getting "stuck" with a bad .config file.
>>>> >> While adding _STRONG support, I discovered the two-phase Kconfig
>>>> >> resolution that happens during the build. If you selected _STRONG with
>>>> >> a strong-capable compiler, everything was fine. If you then tried to
>>>> >> build with an older compiler, you'd get stuck since _STRONG wasn't
>>>> >> support (as detected during the first Kconfig phase) so the
>>>> >> generated/autoconf.h would never get updated with the newly selected
>>>> >> _REGULAR). I moved the Makefile analysis of available stack-protector
>>>> >> options into the second phase (i.e. after all the Kconfig runs), and
>>>> >> that worked to both unstick such configs and provide a clear message
>>>> >> early in the build about what wasn't available.
>>>> >>
>>>> >> If all this detection is getting moved up into Kconfig, I'm worried
>>>> >> we'll end up in this state again. If the answer is "you have to delete
>>>> >> autoconf.h if you change compilers", then that's fine, but it sure
>>>> >> seems unfriendly. :)
>>>> >
>>>> > Did you mean include/config/auto.conf? That's the one that gets
>>>> > included by the Makefiles.
>>>> >
>>>> > If the feature detection is moved into Kconfig, you should only need
>>>> > to rerun the configuration (make menuconfig/oldconfig/olddefconfig) if
>>>> > you change the compiler. That will update .config while taking the new
>>>> > features into account, and then the second phase during 'make' will
>>>> > update include/config/auto.conf from .config.
>>>> >
>>>> > That second Kconfig phase generates include/generated/autoconf.h and
>>>> > include/config/. The include/config/ directory implements dependencies
>>>> > between source files and Kconfig symbols by turning the symbols into
>>>> > (empty) files. When building (during the "second phase"), Kconfig
>>>> > compares .config with include/config/auto.conf to see what changed,
>>>> > and signals the changes to 'make' by touch'ing the files corresponding
>>>> > to the changed symbols. The idea is to avoid having to do a full
>>>> > rebuild whenever the configuration is changed.
>>>> >
>>>> > Check out scripts/basic/fixdep.c as well if you want to understand how it works.
>>>> >
>>>> > Cheers,
>>>> > Ulf
>>>>
>>>> By the way:
>>>>
>>>> That second phase is also a "normal" Kconfig run in the sense that it
>>>> does all the usual dependency checking stuff. Even if .config doesn't
>>>> respect dependencies, include/config/auto.conf will. So I think you
>>>> might not even need to rerun the configuration (though .config will be
>>>> out-of-date until you do).
>>>>
>>>> Cheers,
>>>> Ulf
>>>
>>> Seems you'd have to rerun the configuration, because
>>> include/config/auto.conf is only regenerated if it's older than .config.
>>>
>>> Here's the bit in the root Makefile that does it (KCONFIG_CONFIG is
>>> .config).
>>>
>>>         # If .config is newer than include/config/auto.conf, someone tinkered
>>>         # with it and forgot to run make oldconfig.
>>>         # if auto.conf.cmd is missing then we are probably in a cleaned tree so
>>>         # we execute the config step to be sure to catch updated Kconfig files
>>>         include/config/%.conf: $(KCONFIG_CONFIG) include/config/auto.conf.cmd
>>>                 $(Q)$(MAKE) -f $(srctree)/Makefile silentoldconfig
>>>
>>> silentoldconfig is a terrible name. What it actually does is run that
>>> "second phase" stuff.
>>
>> Right.  This is a historical misnomer.
>>
>> My plan is, as already posted below, to rename 'silentoldconfig' to 'synconfig'
>> https://lkml.org/lkml/2018/1/17/1359
>>
>>
>>
>>> Pretty sure that comment lies by the way. 'make oldconfig' doesn't
>>> update include/config/auto.conf. It's probably outdated.
>>
>> Good catch.
>>
>>
>>>
>>> I wonder if it would be simpler to just always run silentoldconfig when
>>> building. It's not that slow on my system:
>>>
>>>         $ export ARCH=x86 SRCARCH=x86 KERNELVERSION=`make kernelversion`
>>>         $ time scripts/kconfig/conf --silentoldconfig Kconfig
>>>
>>>         real    0m0.167s
>>>         user    0m0.162s
>>>         sys     0m0.004s
>>>
>>> That'd both simplify the Makefiles, and make sure that the latest
>>> features are always used if you do feature testing in Kconfig.
>>>
>>> I don't know how strongly people feel about a few tenths of a second
>>> though.
>>
>>
>> No.  NACK.
>>
>> silentoldconfig touches include/generated/autoconf.h
>> so, files that depend on it will be re-compiled, unnecessarily.
>
>
> Sorry, I take back this comment.
> fixdep takes care of this.
>
> So, autoconf.h is removed from dependency.
>

Still something that would need to be looked into, to make sure
there's nothing depending on stuff generated by silentoldconfig that
would get rebuilt over and over.

Cheers,
Ulf