linux/Documentation/kbuild
Masahiro Yamada fde192511b kconfig: remove tristate choice support
I previously submitted a fix for a bug in the choice feature [1], where
I mentioned, "Another (much cleaner) approach would be to remove the
tristate choice support entirely".

There are more issues in the tristate choice feature. For example, you
can observe a couple of bugs in the following test code.

[Test Code]

    config MODULES
            def_bool y
            modules

    choice
            prompt "tristate choice"
            default A

    config A
            tristate "A"

    config B
            tristate "B"

    endchoice

Bug 1: the 'default' property is not correctly processed

'make alldefconfig' produces:

    CONFIG_MODULES=y
    # CONFIG_A is not set
    # CONFIG_B is not set

However, the correct output should be:

    CONFIG_MODULES=y
    CONFIG_A=y
    # CONFIG_B is not set

The unit test file, scripts/kconfig/tests/choice/alldef_expected_config,
is wrong as well.

Bug 2: choice members never get 'y' with randconfig

For the test code above, the following combinations are possible:

               A    B
        (1)    y    n
        (2)    n    y
        (3)    m    m
        (4)    m    n
        (5)    n    m
        (6)    n    n

'make randconfig' never produces (1) or (2).

These bugs are fixable, but a more critical problem is the lack of a
sensible syntax to specify the default for the tristate choice.
The default for the choice must be one of the choice members, which
cannot specify any of the patterns (3) through (6) above.

In addition, I have never seen it being used in a useful way.

The following commits removed unnecessary use of tristate choices:

 - df8df5e4bc ("usb: get rid of 'choice' for legacy gadget drivers")
 - bfb57ef054 ("rapidio: remove choice for enumeration")

This commit removes the tristate choice support entirely, which allows
me to delete a lot of code, making further refactoring easier.

Note:
This includes the revert of commit fa64e5f6a3 ("kconfig/symbol.c:
handle choice_values that depend on 'm' symbols"). It was suspicious
because it did not address the root cause but introduced inconsistency
in visibility between choice members and other symbols.

[1]: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-kbuild/20240427104231.2728905-1-masahiroy@kernel.org/T/#m0a1bb6992581462ceca861b409bb33cb8fd7dbae

Signed-off-by: Masahiro Yamada <masahiroy@kernel.org>
Reviewed-by: Nicolas Schier <nicolas@fjasle.eu>
2024-07-16 01:08:36 +09:00
..
gcc-plugins.rst docs/core-api: expand Fedora instructions for GCC plugins 2022-09-27 13:21:44 -06:00
headers_install.rst Kbuild updates for v5.3 2019-07-12 16:03:16 -07:00
index.rst Kbuild updates for v5.7 2020-03-31 16:03:39 -07:00
issues.rst docs: kbuild: fix build with pdf and fix some minor issues 2019-07-15 11:03:04 -03:00
kbuild.rst docs: kbuild: add INSTALL_DTBS_PATH 2023-10-18 17:16:09 +09:00
kconfig-language.rst kconfig: remove tristate choice support 2024-07-16 01:08:36 +09:00
kconfig-macro-language.rst kconfig: doc: fix $(fileno) to $(filename) 2020-12-21 16:01:44 +09:00
Kconfig.recursion-issue-01 docs: kconfig: Fix grammar and formatting 2024-02-15 06:55:47 +09:00
Kconfig.recursion-issue-02 docs: use the lore redirector everywhere 2021-10-12 13:58:19 -06:00
kconfig.rst docs: kbuild/kconfig: reformat/cleanup 2024-02-19 18:20:39 +09:00
Kconfig.select-break
llvm.rst Documentation/llvm: Note s390 LLVM=1 support with LLVM 18.1.0 and newer 2024-03-31 21:09:50 +09:00
makefiles.rst kbuild: use $(src) instead of $(srctree)/$(src) for source directory 2024-05-10 04:34:52 +09:00
modules.rst kbuild: doc: Update default INSTALL_MOD_DIR from extra to updates 2024-06-26 00:18:57 +09:00
reproducible-builds.rst Documentation: kbuild: Add description of git for reproducible builds 2022-10-28 00:16:29 +09:00