RE: [patch] i386 "General Options" - begone [take 2]

[Grover, Andrew]

> From: Dave Jones [mailto:[e-mail]] 
>  > This is a tough one because ACPI *is* power management but 
> it is also
>  > configuration. It is equivalent to such things as MPS 
> table parsing, $PIR
>  > parsing, PNPBIOS, as well as APM. The first two don't have 
> CONFIG_ options
>  > at the moment but they should at some point.
>  > The only thing I can think of is a "Platform interface 
> options" menu and
>  > just throw all of the above in that. Any other ideas?
> 
> You seem to be halfway down the road of splitting ACPI in two already,
> with the introduction of CONFIG_ACPI_HT_ONLY recently. Why not bundle
> such options under a CONFIG_ACPI_INITIALISATION or the likes, and
> put the rest under the power management menu as Brad suggested ?

CONFIG_ACPI_HT_ONLY was a concession to the fact that using ACPI for
processor discovery only was possible already, but in general an
all-or-nothing approach to ACPI is IMHO the safest bet.

So, let's assume in the very near future it becomes possible to compile a
kernel without MPS or $PIR support. Where should those config options go?
These, in addition to pnpbios, are also unneeded with ACPI. That is why I
was advocating the more general "Platform interface options" menu, so we
could have *one* place to config these and ACPI in or out, instead of having
the many different platform interface options in different logical areas.

My 2c -- Regards -- Andy