[LinuxBIOS] changes in decompress coming.

[Stefan Reinauer]

* Ronald G Minnich <rminnich at lanl.gov> [060915 18:55]:
> The tricky part for me is still this. If I have four instances of X 
> driver, there's no way I know of in kconfig to set different params for 
> each instance. In kconfig, you say "I have an X", but you can't say, 
> "this is another instance of X, but this time, turn OFF this feature". 
> For example, take this:
> config 8139TOO_PIO
>         bool "Use PIO instead of MMIO"
>         default y
>         depends on 8139TOO
> 
> You can't say "use PIO for instance 1 and don't use it for instance 2". 
> That's not doable in Konfig. 

And not in our current tool either. I believe we should go one step at
a time.

We would now do 4 options if we want 4 instances. Similar as you did
with the compression algorithm
 
>  chip northbridge/amd/amdk8
> with totally different settings for each one.
 
This is a completely different quality of tuning than "set baud rate to
19200" imho. 

> Any mod to the config system -- or new config system -- needs to take 
> this into account. Settings for instances of a given part are not the 
> same for all instances of that part -- they can't be, at the bios level. 

We want 

 a) Kconfig for configuration issues
 b) a tree parser for the rest.

Remember: the tree parser does not set config options as
-DCONFIG_BAUD_RATE=19200 but it creates the static device tree:
a couple of C files.

We mixed these two things in v2 and taring it apart is giving 
us a hard time now. But we should.

> I don't think  Linux Kconfig can accomodate that, but maybe it can. The 
> Kconfig 'all variables global' rule seems to indicate it can't.
 
It can't. And it shouldnt.

> It's funny to hear us arguing *for* global variables :-),but we are :-)

Because we have an incomplete picture of the tree.

Otherwise the Cache-As-Ram enable switch would be a property of the
K8 nodes in the tree. the baud rate would be a property of the serial
node which hangs off the superio which hangs off the south bridge.

More logical? Yes.
Easier? Dunno.



-- 
coresystems GmbH • Brahmsstr. 16 • D-79104 Freiburg i. Br.
      Tel.: +49 761 7668825 • Fax: +49 761 7664613
Email: info at coresystems.de  • http://www.coresystems.de/