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Documentation: kbuild: explain handling optional dependencies
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This problem frequently comes up in randconfig testing, with
drivers failing to link because of a dependency on an optional
feature.

The Kconfig language for this is very confusing, so try to
document it in "Kconfig hints" section.

Reviewed-by: Javier Martinez Canillas <javierm@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: Sakari Ailus <sakari.ailus@linux.intel.com>
Reviewed-by: Nicolas Schier <nicolas@fjasle.eu>
Signed-off-by: Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de>
Signed-off-by: Masahiro Yamada <masahiroy@kernel.org>
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Arnd Bergmann authored and Masahiro Yamada committed Sep 25, 2023
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26 changes: 26 additions & 0 deletions Documentation/kbuild/kconfig-language.rst
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Expand Up @@ -573,6 +573,32 @@ above, leading to:
bool "Support for foo hardware"
depends on ARCH_FOO_VENDOR || COMPILE_TEST

Optional dependencies
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Some drivers are able to optionally use a feature from another module
or build cleanly with that module disabled, but cause a link failure
when trying to use that loadable module from a built-in driver.

The most common way to express this optional dependency in Kconfig logic
uses the slightly counterintuitive::

config FOO
tristate "Support for foo hardware"
depends on BAR || !BAR

This means that there is either a dependency on BAR that disallows
the combination of FOO=y with BAR=m, or BAR is completely disabled.
For a more formalized approach if there are multiple drivers that have
the same dependency, a helper symbol can be used, like::

config FOO
tristate "Support for foo hardware"
depends on BAR_OPTIONAL

config BAR_OPTIONAL
def_tristate BAR || !BAR

Kconfig recursive dependency limitations
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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