On Tue, Apr 09, 2019 at 09:44:33PM +0200, Jean Delvare wrote: > Hi Eddie, > > Thanks for the quick answer. > > On Tue, 9 Apr 2019 10:20:22 -0500, Eddie James wrote: > > On 4/9/19 7:45 AM, Jean Delvare wrote: > > > Don't propose PowerPC-only drivers on other architectures, unless > > > build-testing. > > > > This driver does NOT only run on PowerPC; rather it runs on a BMC > > processor connected to a PowerPC processor. BMC will most likely be ARM, > > Thanks for clarifying. So, you have a server with one or more PowerPC > processors, running any operating system decided by the customer, and > in the same system, is a BMC, running a Linux operating system provided > by IBM? Do I understand it correctly? > > > but shouldn't be restricted to that arch only. > > Why not? Restricting drivers to the architectures or platforms where > they make sense significantly eases the work of the maintainers of > distribution kernels. Each new kernel version comes with several dozens > of new options. Without hints, they have no idea what is needed on > which architecture, and they either select everything, resulting in an > overweight kernel forever, or nothing, resulting in missing features > until someone complains. > > Regardless of any dependency at the Kconfig level, the help text of > these drivers should explain exactly what you wrote above. At the > moment, the reader has no way to guess that the drivers only make sense > for an embedded Linux running on a BMC. As I understand it now, general > purpose distributions do not need these drivers, right? But for example > SUSE kernels included them on all architectures. I just restricted them > to ppc64, but apparently I was wrong and it should be disabled there > too. > > A good Kconfig help text should help the user decide whether they need > the driver or not. > > > > Also drop configuration symbol SENSORS_OCC which serves no purpose > > > that I can see. > > > > > > Signed-off-by: Jean Delvare <jdelvare@xxxxxxx> > > > Cc: Eddie James <eajames@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> > > > Cc: Guenter Roeck <linux@xxxxxxxxxxxx> > > > --- > > > SENSORS_OCC *would* serve a purpose if the common code between the > > > POWER8 driver and the POWER9 driver would go in a separate, shared > > > module, and occ-p8-hwmon and occ-p9-hwmon would only contain the > > > specific code. This would avoid packaging the same code twice in 2 > > > separate modules, therefore saving some storage space for ppc > > > distributions. > > > > Well you'd never have both P8 and P9 enabled at once, so space shouldn't > > be an issue. I agree this could be cleaner but I think I was getting > > Where "you" is IBM, provider of the embedded Linux running on the BMC? > > > duplicate symbol errors for the compile test and so I did it this way. > > If this doesn't lead to errors in the compile test, I'm fine with this > > (without the change for PPC only though). > > Dropping SENSORS_OCC can't result in duplicate symbols because it is a > no-op. But while this is the easiest solution, it it not the cleanest > in my opinion. OTOH, if you are certain that both modules will never be I suspect that referred to symbols in common.c and sysfs.c, but I may be wrong. > shipped at the same time, then it indeed doesn't matter that much. I > can provide a patch going in either direction. Guenter, any preference? > The one I suggested in my other in my reply. Of course, I didn't test it, so it may not work as suggested and require some additional tweaks. Guenter
