Re: CML1 cleanup patch

[Eric S. Raymond]

Peter Samuelson <[e-mail]>:
> > CONFIG_8139TOO			CONFIG_RTL8139TOO
> > CONFIG_8139TOO_PIO		CONFIG_RTL8139TOO_PIO
> > CONFIG_8139TOO_TUNE_TWISTER	CONFIG_RTL8139TOO_TUNE_TWISTER
> 
> The -TOO suffix was to distinguish between this and the former 8139
> driver, as the two coexisted in 2.2 and 2.3.  As the old driver has
> been dropped from 2.4, I propose likewise dropping the -TOO.

I'm preparing an updated version of the patch for 2.4.3-pre8.  I'll
incorporate this change.
 
> Oh, BTW -- an alternate approach to making the kernel tree compatible
> with CML2 would be to make CML2 compatible with the kernel tree.
> Define a character (say '%') as an optional prefix for a configuration
> symbol.  This character would only be required where the symbol would
> otherwise by misparsed, as with '[0-9].*'.

I considered two workarounds:

1. Adding some cruft to the language to support this case, as you suggest.

I might have gone this route, until I tripped over the two bugs and
the bad config symbols in the CRIS port tree.  That meant there was
going to have to be a cleanup patch anyway, so why not fix those 20 
symbols (out of 1831) rather than grubbifying the language?

2. Hacking the CML2 lexical analyzer to handle this case.

I could have done this, allowing tokens to be recognized as numeric only
if all chars are digits.  I didn't, for two reasons: (1) Lexical analysis
is, as it turns out, a hotspot in the CML2 compiler code -- the last thing
it needs is more overhead, and (2) interpreting symbols with leading digits
as nonnumeric tokens is just *wrong*.  Ugh.  Violates the Principle of Least
Surprise big-time.
-- 
		<a href="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>

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