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Date: Mon, 23 Jan 2012 14:46:43 +0100
From: Andrew Jones <drjones@redhat.com>
To: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
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Subject: Re: [PATCH] kconfig: untangle EXPERT and EMBEDDED
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On Wed, Jan 18, 2012 at 12:28:30PM -0800, Andrew Morton wrote:
> time.  But I suggest that we tip both CONFIG_EXPERT and CONFIG_EMBEDDED
> into the ole bit bucket.  What do you guys think would be the negative
> consequences of doing this?

I thought EXPERT was the best way to manage the visibility of expert
options, but probably not, since it's prone to silent default changing. I
think it would be safer if the kconfig language had more support for this
visibility control. Maybe we need another miscellaneous option, like
'option visibility=<level>', level = {low, normal, high, experimental}.
low means practically grayed out (hopefully allowing the eye of the user
to effectively not see it), normal would be a noop, high makes it stand
out, and experimental would be like high, except also throw a canned
sentence in that says it's not ready for production. (This additional
focus on EXPERIMENTAL was inspired by your comments on it possibly
deserving a special color or something.) Of course, additional or
different levels could be conceived of, but in general I think we need
better ways to supply hints to kconfig frontends about visibility.
Something that can't get tangled up with default values.

Drew