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authorSam Ravnborg <sam@ravnborg.org>2008-01-28 21:49:46 +0100
committerSam Ravnborg <sam@ravnborg.org>2008-01-28 23:21:19 +0100
commit9b3e4dad7e58405de398faa17cb4691ca85eb050 (patch)
tree3b0703f130441038b5c733426186d4c00c284862
parent312b1485fb509c9bc32eda28ad29537896658cb8 (diff)
kconfig: document use of HAVE_*
It has been discussed on lkml several times but we need it documented as this is new stuff. Signed-off-by: Sam Ravnborg <sam@ravnborg.org>
-rw-r--r--Documentation/kbuild/kconfig-language.txt36
1 files changed, 36 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/kbuild/kconfig-language.txt b/Documentation/kbuild/kconfig-language.txt
index a43fcc68e17..649cb879989 100644
--- a/Documentation/kbuild/kconfig-language.txt
+++ b/Documentation/kbuild/kconfig-language.txt
@@ -330,6 +330,42 @@ This is a collection of Kconfig tips, most of which aren't obvious at
first glance and most of which have become idioms in several Kconfig
files.
+Adding common features and make the usage configurable
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+It is a common idiom to implement a feature/functionality that are
+relevant for some architectures but not all.
+The recommended way to do so is to use a config variable named HAVE_*
+that is defined in a common Kconfig file and selected by the relevant
+architectures.
+An example is the generic IOMAP functionality.
+
+We would in lib/Kconfig see:
+
+# Generic IOMAP is used to ...
+config HAVE_GENERIC_IOMAP
+
+config GENERIC_IOMAP
+ depends on HAVE_GENERIC_IOMAP && FOO
+
+And in lib/Makefile we would see:
+obj-$(CONFIG_GENERIC_IOMAP) += iomap.o
+
+For each architecture using the generic IOMAP functionality we would see:
+
+config X86
+ select ...
+ select HAVE_GENERIC_IOMAP
+ select ...
+
+Note: we use the existing config option and avoid creating a new
+config variable to select HAVE_GENERIC_IOMAP.
+
+Note: the use of the internal config variable HAVE_GENERIC_IOMAP, it is
+introduced to overcome the limitation of select which will force a
+config option to 'y' no matter the dependencies.
+The dependencies are moved to the symbol GENERIC_IOMAP and we avoid the
+situation where select forces a symbol equals to 'y'.
+
Build as module only
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
To restrict a component build to module-only, qualify its config symbol