On Mon, Oct 02, 2017 at 12:00:54PM +0300, Jani Nikula wrote:
On Mon, 02 Oct 2017, Daniel Thompson daniel.thompson@linaro.org wrote:
So I'm coming to this patchset cold but can you explain *why* something wants to call of_find_backlight_by_node() when there is no backlight support enabled. Why isn't the code that called is conditional on BACKLIGHT_CLASS_DEVICE?
The undefined symbol issue is a pain but to be honest I'd rather solve the use of undefined symbols by avoiding declaring them; this making them into compile errors rather than link errors.
Typically the kernel header files define static inline stubs of the functions when the actual functions aren't configured/built. The code using the functions looks the same regardless of the config option, and handles the -ENODEV or NULL or whatever returns from the stubs gracefully. With the inlines, the compiler can usually throw out much of the code anyway.
In this regard, the backlight interface is an exception, forcing the callers to wrap the code around IS_ENABLED(BACKLIGHT_CLASS_DEVICE), not the rule.
fwiw, I think it'd be great if we can move backlight over to the common pattern, like everyone else. It's pretty big pain as-is ... -Daniel