| Message ID | 20140321094636.66fc62f2@endymion.delvare (mailing list archive) |
|---|---|
| State | New, archived |
| Delegated to: | Jiri Kosina |
| Headers | show |
On Fri, 21 Mar 2014, Jean Delvare wrote: > Many HID driver options are hidden unless EXPERT is set. While I > understand the idea of simplifying the kernel configuration for most > users, in practice I believe it adds more confusion than it helps. Hi Jean, actually this question has been raised by several people in the past already. Copy/pasting the latest reply I have sent on this topic === mostly this is because we don't want to bother users with asking for every single quirky device/vendor, as there are unfortunately a lot of them. Usually compiling everything in doesn't waste runtime footprint (the modules don't get loaded unless needed), and they don't cost too much disk space either. And if you really want to disable them, CONFIG_EMBEDDED allows you to do that. Please see last paragraph on https://lkml.org/lkml/2008/10/14/266 === i.e. it was explicitly requested by Linus. That's the history. Now, admittedly, it was quite some time ago, and HID world has matured a lot since then, so the 'quirks' turned out into proper drivers. So maybe there indeed might be a good time to try it again.
Hi Jiri, On Fri, 28 Mar 2014 15:13:39 -0700 (PDT), Jiri Kosina wrote: > On Fri, 21 Mar 2014, Jean Delvare wrote: > > > Many HID driver options are hidden unless EXPERT is set. While I > > understand the idea of simplifying the kernel configuration for most > > users, in practice I believe it adds more confusion than it helps. > > actually this question has been raised by several people in the past > already. Copy/pasting the latest reply I have sent on this topic > > === > mostly this is because we don't want to bother users with asking for every > single quirky device/vendor, as there are unfortunately a lot of them. > Usually compiling everything in doesn't waste runtime footprint (the > modules don't get loaded unless needed), and they don't cost too much disk > space either. The problem is that the hidden options may end up built-in, not modular, in which case they are actually wasting runtime footprint, and polluting /sys/bus/hid/drivers. > And if you really want to disable them, CONFIG_EMBEDDED allows you to do > that. True, but CONFIG_EMBEDDED / CONFIG_EXPERT are tree-wide settings. Enabling them un-hides a lot more options than just these HID drivers. Not everyone wants that. Other subsystems have solved the problem with specific options, which give the user more flexibility over which areas he/she wants to fine-tune. See for example CONFIG_I2C_HELPER_AUTO and CONFIG_MEDIA_SUBDRV_AUTOSELECT. That might be an alternative if you really think that these drivers entries should be hidden by default (I don't.) > Please see last paragraph on > > https://lkml.org/lkml/2008/10/14/266 > > === > > i.e. it was explicitly requested by Linus. > > That's the history. Well, I see that Linus was mostly unhappy because the of the new warnings introduced by the change. Plus... > Now, admittedly, it was quite some time ago, and HID world has matured a > lot since then, so the 'quirks' turned out into proper drivers. So maybe > there indeed might be a good time to try it again. ... these were boolean quirks, and IIRC everything ended up being built in the same module. So the discussion was relevant back then. Now we have separate drivers, controlled by tristate options. This is a completely different situation. Also, many drivers were added since then. I doubt that hiding 11 drivers, while about 50 are always presented to the user, really helps easing the configuration, if that was the actual goal. In fact, looking at the git history, I can see that more drivers used to depend on CONFIG_EMBEDDED / CONFIG_EXPERT, and these dependencies were removed over time: commit 4b186f72033611c2b526c7341534e71ee4afd222 Author: Jiri Kosina <jkosina@suse.cz> Date: Wed Dec 23 13:12:32 2009 +0100 HID: make 3M PCT touchscreen driver standalone config option commit 92688c0c3c1c9e2daf705d307e8fda1b5a180d26 Author: Jiri Kosina <jkosina@suse.cz> Date: Mon Jan 4 12:04:59 2010 +0100 HID: make Stantum driver standalone config option commit 2dbf209d7a7ab94266b936bd2da6a4026c279992 Author: Jiri Kosina <jkosina@suse.cz> Date: Wed Feb 3 16:11:12 2010 +0100 HID: make full-fledged hid-bus drivers properly selectable commit 23d386d85a9144612c4a13733aa1ca6e5a21f4a2 Author: Jiri Kosina <jkosina@suse.cz> Date: Mon Mar 22 16:33:15 2010 +0100 HID: fixup Kconfig entry for Roccat Kone commit 95736de984dec5b80ea9d6640d4d55ca8ff98db4 Author: Jiri Kosina <jkosina@suse.cz> Date: Wed May 12 15:27:00 2010 +0200 HID: make Prodikeys driver standalone config option commit 73d5e8f77e88a4d3a154dfdbb4ed2cf461b7bf21 Author: Jiri Kosina <jkosina@suse.cz> Date: Fri May 21 13:15:17 2010 +0200 HID: fix up 'EMBEDDED' mess in Kconfig commit f36ee074d5d563a832fbfc378207739db3a0a205 Author: Jiri Kosina <jkosina@suse.cz> Date: Mon Aug 9 19:56:01 2010 +0200 HID: uclogic: fix up Kconfig entry commit dfe9a31211c0a3a0252af6c87935d7ac718aadf9 Author: Jiri Kosina <jkosina@suse.cz> Date: Mon Oct 17 17:04:58 2011 +0200 HID: primax: remove spurious dependency commit 22ca20b250f5c9672a53b34f032f43dd2c4a4aaf Author: Nikolai Kondrashov <spbnick@gmail.com> Date: Tue Feb 28 13:01:46 2012 +0200 HID: kye: Add support for 3 tablets And I may have missed some. So all I am really asking here, is that we finish a cleanup that already started over 4 years ago. If this is really only a question of which devices are more likely to be used by a large number of users, then that's what defaults are for. Thanks,
--- linux-3.14-rc7.orig/drivers/hid/Kconfig 2014-03-20 21:06:41.457316973 +0100 +++ linux-3.14-rc7/drivers/hid/Kconfig 2014-03-20 21:06:59.861752396 +0100 @@ -91,7 +91,7 @@ menu "Special HID drivers" depends on HID config HID_A4TECH - tristate "A4 tech mice" if EXPERT + tristate "A4 tech mice" depends on HID default !EXPERT ---help--- @@ -112,7 +112,7 @@ config HID_ACRUX_FF game controllers. config HID_APPLE - tristate "Apple {i,Power,Mac}Books" if EXPERT + tristate "Apple {i,Power,Mac}Books" depends on HID default !EXPERT ---help--- @@ -140,21 +140,21 @@ config HID_AUREAL Support for Aureal Cy se W-01RN Remote Controller and other Aureal derived remotes. config HID_BELKIN - tristate "Belkin Flip KVM and Wireless keyboard" if EXPERT + tristate "Belkin Flip KVM and Wireless keyboard" depends on HID default !EXPERT ---help--- Support for Belkin Flip KVM and Wireless keyboard. config HID_CHERRY - tristate "Cherry Cymotion keyboard" if EXPERT + tristate "Cherry Cymotion keyboard" depends on HID default !EXPERT ---help--- Support for Cherry Cymotion keyboard. config HID_CHICONY - tristate "Chicony Tactical pad" if EXPERT + tristate "Chicony Tactical pad" depends on HID default !EXPERT ---help--- @@ -176,7 +176,7 @@ config HID_PRODIKEYS and some additional multimedia keys. config HID_CYPRESS - tristate "Cypress mouse and barcode readers" if EXPERT + tristate "Cypress mouse and barcode readers" depends on HID default !EXPERT ---help--- @@ -225,7 +225,7 @@ config HID_ELO different devices than those handled by CONFIG_TOUCHSCREEN_USB_ELO. config HID_EZKEY - tristate "Ezkey BTC 8193 keyboard" if EXPERT + tristate "Ezkey BTC 8193 keyboard" depends on HID default !EXPERT ---help--- @@ -310,7 +310,7 @@ config HID_TWINHAN Support for Twinhan IR remote control. config HID_KENSINGTON - tristate "Kensington Slimblade Trackball" if EXPERT + tristate "Kensington Slimblade Trackball" depends on HID default !EXPERT ---help--- @@ -336,7 +336,7 @@ config HID_LENOVO_TPKBD controlling the mute and microphone mute LEDs. config HID_LOGITECH - tristate "Logitech devices" if EXPERT + tristate "Logitech devices" depends on HID default !EXPERT ---help--- @@ -413,14 +413,14 @@ config HID_MAGICMOUSE Apple Wireless "Magic" Mouse and the Apple Wireless "Magic" Trackpad. config HID_MICROSOFT - tristate "Microsoft non-fully HID-compliant devices" if EXPERT + tristate "Microsoft non-fully HID-compliant devices" depends on HID default !EXPERT ---help--- Support for Microsoft devices that are not fully compliant with HID standard. config HID_MONTEREY - tristate "Monterey Genius KB29E keyboard" if EXPERT + tristate "Monterey Genius KB29E keyboard" depends on HID default !EXPERT ---help---
Many HID driver options are hidden unless EXPERT is set. While I understand the idea of simplifying the kernel configuration for most users, in practice I believe it adds more confusion than it helps. One thing that worries me is that, in non-EXPERT mode, these drivers will be either built-in or modular based on apparent magic. For example, switching INPUT and HID from m to y will cause all these drivers to be built into the kernel when they were previously built as modules. Short of enabling EXPERT mode altogether, the user has no control over that. Generally I do not think tristate options should depend on !EXPERT. Of these, 11 of 15 are currently in the hid subsystem. The HID_LOGITECH option is even worse than the others. Sub-options depend on it, and this causes menuconfig and friends to display the option even though the user can't change its value. The help page for HID_LOGITECH will not explain why the value can't be changed. It only says, for example: Depends on: INPUT [=y] && HID [=y] and that leaves the user puzzled about why the option is forced to y. You might argue that this is a Kconfig bug, but that doesn't make it less annoying for the user. Even worse is that some of the sub-options of HID_LOGITECH select INPUT_FF_MEMLESS, which in turn gets out of control for the user. So, if you set INPUT=y and HID=y (something most general purpose distributions would do these days, as both modules would get loaded on a vast majority of systems otherwise), and you want support for force-feedback game controllers, you can't have that as a module, it has to be built-in, regardless of how rare these devices are. Of course, all this madness goes away once EXPERT is enabled, but then the rest of the kernel configuration becomes more complex, which totally voids the original point. For this reason, I would like all HID device tristate options to be displayed regardless of EXPERT being set or not. We can let the default settings still depend on EXPERT, that's not intrusive. Signed-off-by: Jean Delvare <jdelvare@suse.de> Cc: Jiri Kosina <jkosina@suse.cz> --- drivers/hid/Kconfig | 22 +++++++++++----------- 1 file changed, 11 insertions(+), 11 deletions(-)