Messages in this thread | | | Date | Tue, 20 Jan 2004 23:27:00 +0100 | From | Adrian Bunk <> | Subject | Re: 2.6.1-mm5 (compile stats) |
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On Tue, Jan 20, 2004 at 02:15:10PM -0800, John Cherry wrote: >... > > Regarding allnoconfig: > > allnoconfig is a completely pathological case. It says "n" to support > > for ISA, MCA and PCI, and neither networking nor any block devices. > > Besides, it says "n" to ELF, a.out and other binary formats. > > Demanding that allnoconfig should compile (although the resulting kernel > > is completely useless) sounds a bit like demanding that no change in the > > kernel is allowed to cause regressions in the dbench results... > > It is useful to omit a common option like e.g. PCI and check whether the > > kernel still compiles, but allnoconfig removes nearly everything and > > compiles such a small part of the kernel, that it's hardly useful. > > I realize that allnoconfig is pathological, but it has caught several > config errors. One would never try to boot from such a config. Builds > based on allnoconfig have one purpose and that purpose is to validate > that defines are not used in cases where they are NOT defined in the > configuration. Developers will quite often code a feature or > architecture with the config parameters always ON. When the config > option is turned OFF, I will find compile errors, undefined variables, > and the like. This is actually quite a valuable screen.
The problem is that allnoconfig turns _everything_ off.
Cases like e.g. CONFIG_PROC_FS=n are interesting, but allnoconfig doesn't really test them since allnoconfig also says "n" to all drivers.
> If developers feel that this has outlived its usefulness, I'll remove it > from the compile regressions. However, all I have received at this > point have been requests to put an allnoconfig build into the > regressions.
I'd like to hear from the people requesting it why they consider it useful.
In my personal experience, compiling allyesconfig but with CONFIG_SMP=n (which enables BROKEN_ON_SMP drivers), and compiling with gcc 2.95 are more interesing (and more realistic) configurations than allnoconfig that find many compile errors.
> John
cu Adrian
--
"Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days. "Only a promise," Lao Er said. Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed
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