On Mon, 15 Oct 2018, Hannes Reinecke wrote: > > > > In the case of send_cmd_residual, that would mean a second #ifdef > > added to esp_data_bytes_sent() where it gets used. I'm happy to comply > > but I fear that all these #ifdefs may harm readability... > > > > There are already other variables in struct esp that may go unused, > > such as dma_regs, that don't have #ifdefs to elide them. Are these > > also problematic in some way? > > > The unused fields in the struct are not so much an issue; in fact, it > rather complicated things when having individual fields in the struct > surrounded by CONFIG_XXX, as then the order of the fields would change > depending on the configuration. Which makes it really hard to debug .. > True enough. We agree that this #ifdef is undesirable. And yet when I tried it, I found an unexpected readability benefit to your suggestion: #ifdef CONFIG_SCSI_ESP_PIO u8 __iomem *fifo_reg; int send_cmd_error; u32 send_cmd_residual; #endif This grouping does help convey the purpose of these struct members, even though the #ifdef is meant for the compiler not for the human reader. So maybe it makes sense to group these definitions (they are all the same size): /* These are used by esp_scsi_send_pio_cmd() */ u8 __iomem *fifo_reg; int send_cmd_error; u32 send_cmd_residual; > However, the function declaration really is a worry, as the actual > function body only exists when the config option is enabled. So either > add a dummy function or surround the function declaration by > CONFIG_ESP_PIO. > Otherwise I think Dan Carpenter and the likes are guaranteed to send you > a nice mail complaining about this ... > Do static checkers really complain about this? I think the validity of an extern can't be known until the final linkage is done. At that point the checker may complain that no compilation unit references a symbol in a header. But this would lead to false positives where a header file is shared by separate programs which share library code but not macros. -- > Cheers, > > Hannes >