xref: /OK3568_Linux_fs/kernel/Documentation/kbuild/Kconfig.recursion-issue-01 (revision 4882a59341e53eb6f0b4789bf948001014eff981)
1*4882a593Smuzhiyun# Simple Kconfig recursive issue
2*4882a593Smuzhiyun# ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
3*4882a593Smuzhiyun#
4*4882a593Smuzhiyun# Test with:
5*4882a593Smuzhiyun#
6*4882a593Smuzhiyun# make KBUILD_KCONFIG=Documentation/kbuild/Kconfig.recursion-issue-01 allnoconfig
7*4882a593Smuzhiyun#
8*4882a593Smuzhiyun# This Kconfig file has a simple recursive dependency issue. In order to
9*4882a593Smuzhiyun# understand why this recursive dependency issue occurs lets consider what
10*4882a593Smuzhiyun# Kconfig needs to address. We iterate over what Kconfig needs to address
11*4882a593Smuzhiyun# by stepping through the questions it needs to address sequentially.
12*4882a593Smuzhiyun#
13*4882a593Smuzhiyun#  * What values are possible for CORE?
14*4882a593Smuzhiyun#
15*4882a593Smuzhiyun# CORE_BELL_A_ADVANCED selects CORE, which means that it influences the values
16*4882a593Smuzhiyun# that are possible for CORE. So for example if CORE_BELL_A_ADVANCED is 'y',
17*4882a593Smuzhiyun# CORE must be 'y' too.
18*4882a593Smuzhiyun#
19*4882a593Smuzhiyun#  * What influences CORE_BELL_A_ADVANCED ?
20*4882a593Smuzhiyun#
21*4882a593Smuzhiyun# As the name implies CORE_BELL_A_ADVANCED is an advanced feature of
22*4882a593Smuzhiyun# CORE_BELL_A so naturally it depends on CORE_BELL_A. So if CORE_BELL_A is 'y'
23*4882a593Smuzhiyun# we know CORE_BELL_A_ADVANCED can be 'y' too.
24*4882a593Smuzhiyun#
25*4882a593Smuzhiyun#   * What influences CORE_BELL_A ?
26*4882a593Smuzhiyun#
27*4882a593Smuzhiyun# CORE_BELL_A depends on CORE, so CORE influences CORE_BELL_A.
28*4882a593Smuzhiyun#
29*4882a593Smuzhiyun# But that is a problem, because this means that in order to determine
30*4882a593Smuzhiyun# what values are possible for CORE we ended up needing to address questions
31*4882a593Smuzhiyun# regarding possible values of CORE itself again. Answering the original
32*4882a593Smuzhiyun# question of what are the possible values of CORE would make the kconfig
33*4882a593Smuzhiyun# tools run in a loop. When this happens Kconfig exits and complains about
34*4882a593Smuzhiyun# the "recursive dependency detected" error.
35*4882a593Smuzhiyun#
36*4882a593Smuzhiyun# Reading the Documentation/kbuild/Kconfig.recursion-issue-01 file it may be
37*4882a593Smuzhiyun# obvious that an easy to solution to this problem should just be the removal
38*4882a593Smuzhiyun# of the "select CORE" from CORE_BELL_A_ADVANCED as that is implicit already
39*4882a593Smuzhiyun# since CORE_BELL_A depends on CORE. Recursive dependency issues are not always
40*4882a593Smuzhiyun# so trivial to resolve, we provide another example below of practical
41*4882a593Smuzhiyun# implications of this recursive issue where the solution is perhaps not so
42*4882a593Smuzhiyun# easy to understand. Note that matching semantics on the dependency on
43*4882a593Smuzhiyun# CORE also consist of a solution to this recursive problem.
44*4882a593Smuzhiyun
45*4882a593Smuzhiyunmainmenu "Simple example to demo kconfig recursive dependency issue"
46*4882a593Smuzhiyun
47*4882a593Smuzhiyunconfig CORE
48*4882a593Smuzhiyun	tristate
49*4882a593Smuzhiyun
50*4882a593Smuzhiyunconfig CORE_BELL_A
51*4882a593Smuzhiyun	tristate
52*4882a593Smuzhiyun	depends on CORE
53*4882a593Smuzhiyun
54*4882a593Smuzhiyunconfig CORE_BELL_A_ADVANCED
55*4882a593Smuzhiyun	tristate
56*4882a593Smuzhiyun	depends on CORE_BELL_A
57*4882a593Smuzhiyun	select CORE
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