IP_VS should depend on EXPERIMENTAL ?

Hi,

IP_VS has :

..

tristate "IP virtual server support (EXPERIMENTAL)"

..

but it does not depend on EXPERIMENTAL.

---

 net/ipv4/ipvs/Kconfig |    2 +-
 1 files changed, 1 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-)

index 09d0c3f..3c594ec 100644
@@ -3,7 +3,7 @@
 #
 menuconfig IP_VS
 	tristate "IP virtual server support (EXPERIMENTAL)"
-	depends on NETFILTER
+	depends on NETFILTER && EXPERIMENTAL
 	---help---
 	  IP Virtual Server support will let you build a high-performance
 	  virtual server based on cluster of two or more real servers. This

[ a lot examples ]

I know that and there are a lot more things depending on 'EXPERIMENTAL' and not having EXPERIMENTAL visible all over the tree but that patch I've made for the _net_ part got NACK'ed while your maturity idea and I rm -rf'ed all the other.

This one has a missing depends on EXPERIMENTAL while saying it is.

So *could* we please stop this maturity stuff for now ? I don't see it in .23 nor .24 if at all.

And even you get this kind changes for .24 almost a sed line will cleanup the whole tree from :

... "FOO blah (EXPERIMENTAL)" ...

so what is your problem ?

Gabriel

this has *nothing* to do with the aforementioned maturity levels. i understand entirely the inconsistency above. what i'm suggesting is that it might very well be more appropriate to *drop the dependency* rather than munge the prompt to add the qualifier.

i think it's safe to say that there's *piles* of stuff in the Kconfig files that is still saddled with an EXPERIMENTAL dependency that's been around for years and has stabilized nicely. i mean, seriously, is IP virtual server support still "experimental" in any way?

rday
--
========================================================================
Robert P. J. Day
Linux Consulting, Training and Annoying Kernel Pedantry Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA

http://fsdev.net/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page
========================================================================

This is a thing the author/maintainer/subsystem maintainer should and need do.

They know when something is not EXPERIMENTAL anymore.

I agree with you , there may be a lot things are marked EXPERIMENTAL but aren't anymore.

Gabriel

agreed (sort of). all i'm saying (and after this, i'll shut the heck up about it) is that, if you find a Kconfig entry of the form:

config FUBAR

	prompt "whatever"
	depends on ... && EXPERIMENTAL

and you want to make that selection consistent, you have two possibilities:

1) add "(EXPERIMENTAL)" to the prompt to match the dependency, or
2) drop the dependency on EXPERIMENTAL to match the prompt

i contend that, *for now*, it's a better investment in time to find
entries like that that are *clearly* not experimental any more, and drop the dependency. not only will that make it consistent, but it's unlikely that you'll ever have to *revert* that decision.

OTOH, it's quite possible that, after you add the prompt suffix of
"(EXPERIMENTAL)" for consistency, the feature maintainer might come by tomorrow and say something like, "nah, that feature's been around for years, it's as stable as it gets," and will undo the patch you just made, wasting your time and effort.

lastly, i'm not convinced that it's *only* the feature maintainer
that can make that decision. surely, there's enough clever people here who can look at any given feature and say, "yeah, i've been using that for years, it's rock solid, it's stupid to keep that dependent on EXPERIMENTAL."

all i'm saying is, if you want to put some time in here, it's better
invested in *removing* what are clearly ridiculous dependencies on EXPERIMENTAL, rather than *adding* even more of that labelling to the tree.

rday

p.s. even if a given Kconfig entry *is* consistent, as in:

config SNAFU

	bool "... (EXPERIMENTAL)"
	depends on ... && EXPERIMENTAL
	...

it's clear that there's a pile of *that* stuff for which all
references to EXPERIMENTAL can be dropped. all in all, given the possible cleanup here, i'm thinking that going in and *adding* more EXPERIMENTAL clutter to the Kconfig files is going in exactly the wrong direction.

--
========================================================================
Robert P. J. Day
Linux Consulting, Training and Annoying Kernel Pedantry Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA

http://fsdev.net/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page
========================================================================

as a short followup to my previous post, at the *very least*, a
cleanup that could be done now is to find all entries which have an actual dependency on "EXPERIMENTAL" but don't advertise themselves as such:

...
config MA600_DONGLE

        tristate "Mobile Action MA600 dongle"
        depends on IRTTY_SIR && DONGLE && IRDA && EXPERIMENTAL
	...

and determine which of those should have the dependency on "EXPERIMENTAL" removed. no, don't go adding "(EXPERIMENTAL)" to the prompt -- just deal with *only* those for which the dependency is clearly out of date and not relevant anymore, and delete it.

that would be, at least, a place to start. and, yes, there's piles of potential (net/ipv4/Kconfig):

config TCP_CONG_HSTCP
tristate "High Speed TCP"
depends on EXPERIMENTAL
...
config TCP_CONG_HYBLA
tristate "TCP-Hybla congestion control algorithm" depends on EXPERIMENTAL
...
config TCP_CONG_VEGAS
tristate "TCP Vegas"
depends on EXPERIMENTAL
...
... etc etc ...

rday

========================================================================
Robert P. J. Day
Linux Consulting, Training and Annoying Kernel Pedantry
Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA

http://fsdev.net/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page
========================================================================