From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S965581AbXBFXts (ORCPT ); Tue, 6 Feb 2007 18:49:48 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S965591AbXBFXts (ORCPT ); Tue, 6 Feb 2007 18:49:48 -0500 Received: from smtp.osdl.org ([65.172.181.24]:55639 "EHLO smtp.osdl.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S965590AbXBFXtq (ORCPT ); Tue, 6 Feb 2007 18:49:46 -0500 Date: Tue, 6 Feb 2007 15:49:33 -0800 (PST) From: Linus Torvalds To: David Woodhouse cc: Randy Dunlap , Ingo Molnar , Linux Kernel Mailing List Subject: Re: [patch] MTD: fix DOC2000/2001/2001PLUS build error In-Reply-To: <1170803900.29759.1040.camel@pmac.infradead.org> Message-ID: References: <1170803900.29759.1040.camel@pmac.infradead.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Tue, 6 Feb 2007, David Woodhouse wrote: > > Out of interest, which people would this be? Not me, certainly. > I _use_ select, for options which don't have questions. There were two > such instances in the context of Ingo's mail of $subject, even. > > And the thing Randy was saying "yes" to, which you elided but I've > restored in the above quotation, was the idea of turning 'select' into > 'depends on' for _user-visible_ options. NOT for the ones which don't > have a question. Example: crypto api. SCSI. firewall "expert mode". Any number of things. Qutie often, the questions themselves are *conditional*. For example, look at the whole INPUT layer thing. It is a real question, but only for EMBEDDED - normally, we just assume we'll use it (but it's a classic example of where we could have used a "select" from the keyboard driver instead). For normal people, it's a question that simply shouldn't be asked. You don't ask normal users whether they want to hook up keyboards and mice (and trust me when I say that: we _used_ to ask. It generated tons of totally idiotic noise). Linus