RFC: Support for U-Boot phases in Kconfig

[Tom Rini]

On Wed, Aug 11, 2021 at 08:11:41AM -0600, Simon Glass wrote:
> Hi Tom,
> 
> On Wed, 11 Aug 2021 at 08:02, Tom Rini <trini at konsulko.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Wed, Aug 11, 2021 at 06:56:31AM -0600, Simon Glass wrote:
> > [snip]
> > > Having thought a bit more, perhaps we have the wrong attitude to
> > > Kconfig. The CONFIG() macro I am talking about works by building an
> > > xxx or SPL_xxx config. If we have separate autoconf.h files for each
> > > phase (autoconf_spl.h etc.) then we don't actually need this. We just
> > > need to include the correct file. Any SPL_xxx config can be written as
> > > xxx. Similarly the Makefile rules can drop the $(P) I was proposing.
> > >
> > > We can, in fact, generate separate autoconf.h files for each phase
> > > today, with no other changes. Unless I am missing something...?
> >
> > If we can spit out {spl_,tpl_,}autoconf.h files that might help a bit.
> > But would it help with the recent case of SPL has SATA+AHCI+!PCI while
> > full U-Boot has SATA+AHCI+!PCI AND SATA+AHCI+PCI ?  Today we can't
> > support the SPL case without adding the handful of SPL_xxx symbols so
> > that we can say we have SATA+AHCI without PCI.
> 
> My thought is that:
> 
> - where there is no SPL_xxx symbol, it we would have CONFIG_xxx=y in
> all autoconf.h files
> - where there is an SPL_xxx symbol, it we would only have it in
> spl_autoconf.h if the SPL_xxx symbol is enabled
> 
> So it does not reduce the power/flexibility of what we have to cover
> all cases. It is just a phase-specific way of presenting the configs
> to the build, so we can do:
> 
> obj-$(CONFIG_FOO) += foo.o
> 
> as well as
> 
> if (CONFIG(FOO))
> 
> I'm still thinking about Kconfig. To me it seems that separating the
> phases so completely is giving up quite a bit. There is no-longer a
> unified build, so dependencies between phases may become a problem. I
> think in fact our problem is the use of SPL_ and TPL_ prefixes on
> Kconfigs, which you have highlighted. Perhaps we just shouldn't do
> that. It would be nice if kconfig could support multiple interrelated
> build phases and output a separate autoconf.h for each one.

What are the dependencies we have between phases?  You've mentioned
bloblist, but to me that's like BOARD_INIT and MISC_INIT_R and all of
the other things you need to have select'd on a platform because they're
non-optional.

And I'm really not seeing now how we would support the example I gave as
for them SPL with SATA+AHCI+PCI is not desired nor possible.  I asked.
The answer was no, don't want it.  Or do you really just mean that if we
had spl_autoconf.h the only thing that would change is that we would
never test on CONFIG_SPL_xxx only CONFIG_xxx, but we would still need to
Kconfig SPL_xxx?

-- 
Tom
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 659 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://lists.denx.de/pipermail/u-boot/attachments/20210811/20e9eee2/attachment.sig>