DESKTOP mode

[Denis Vlasenko]

On Sunday 01 October 2006 18:13, Bernhard Fischer wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 01, 2006 at 05:45:08PM +0200, Denis Vlasenko wrote:
> 
> >Few examples: (1) Midnight Commander uses -v option when it calls
> >g[un]zip. It is of course fixable in MC, but the goal is to make
> >bbox usable on _unmodified_ desktop system!
> >(2) od -t is used in bbox's own build system, but bbox od doesn't
> >handle -t.
> >(3) bbox build started to produce larger (+100k) executable
> >from the same source tree and .config. Wow...
> >Did not track down which applet affects this, and how...

(3) is fixed btw. Gory details are in svn log.

> >(1) and (2) are good examples of cases which do not matter for
> >embedded world but are needed on desktop.
> >
> >Busybox should not lose its position of embedded device tool.
> >I think it makes sense to introduce CONFIG_DESKTOP and put
> >all such things under it. I will add such thing with gunzip -v fix.
> >Non-DESKTOP bbox will silently ignore -v,
> >DESKTOP one will print statistics.
> >
> >I know that increased attention to destop needs will inevibably
> >lead to _some_ increases in size even for non DESKTOP case.
> 
> I'm not (yet) convinced that an additional DESKTOP mode is a good idea;
> Up to now, we had most of the stuff that adds bloat under separately
> tuneable config options, so you could toggle them at will if you need
> them. I fear that the proposed desktop mode will make it mere impossible
> to tune features in a fine-grained manner.

The idea is that we don't want to drown in CONFIG_applet1_FEATURE_x,
CONFIG_applet1_FEATURE_y, CONFIG_applet1_FEATURE_z, CONFIG_applet2_FEATURE_x,
CONFIG_applet2_FEATURE_y, CONFIG_applet2_FEATURE_z...
There are just farr too many of them.

Everything which is not likely to be ever needed on
the embedded device, is covered by single CONFIG_DESKTOP
(gzip -v is a good example).

However, if some option is under CONFIG_DESKTOP but then
someone feels [s]he really needs to be able to toggle
it separately, okay, send a patch which
(1) introduces new CONFIG_GZIP_FEATURE_V
(2) changes code to be conditionally compiled under it and
(3) adds "select CONFIG_GZIP_FEATURE_V" to CONFIG_DESKTOP entry,
so that selecting CONFIG_DESKTOP=y automagically turns it on too.

IOW: introduce individual CONFIGs on as-needed basis.
--
vda