Prohibit CONFIG_MTD_PARTITIONS

Signed-off-by: Artem Bityutskiy <Artem.Bityutskiy@nokia.com>

diff --git a/doc/general.xml b/doc/general.xml
index 4e1bfdd9ece3125b476b3d9ef601603ba22f1d4b..28395f3c87410aa13f2a0b61d26b7148e56cbd5d 100644 (file)
--- a/doc/general.xml
+++ b/doc/general.xml
@@ -16,6 +16,7 @@
        <li><a href="general.html#L_mtd_tests">MTD tests</a></li>
        <li><a href="general.html#L_mtdblock">The <code>mtdblock</code> driver</a></li>
        <li><a href="general.html#L_old_docs">Old MTD documentation</a></li>
+       <li><a href="general.html#L_partitions_ban">CONFIG_MTD_PARTITIONS is prohibited</a></li>
 </ol>
 
 
@@ -160,5 +161,33 @@ is available <a href="../tech/mtdnand/index.html">here</a>.</p>
 
 
 
+<h2><a name="L_partitions_ban">CONFIG_MTD_PARTITIONS is prohibited</a></h2>
+
+<p>Currently (as of 18 Apr 2011) the MTD partitions support has a configuration
+option which allows to compile it into the kernel or compile it out. The
+corresponding macro is <code>CONFIG_MTD_PARTITIONS</code>. The MTD partitions
+support binary size is 7KiB in size when it is compiled for ARM. Probably in
+the past this was considered a lot, but nowadays this is not a lot for most
+embedded systems.</p>
+
+<p>The problem with <code>CONFIG_MTD_PARTITIONS</code> is that it introduces
+mess. Indeed, you can find 128 references to this configuration option in the
+MTD subsystem in the Linux kernel version 2.6.39-rc3:</p>
+
+<pre>
+[linux-2.6.39-rc3]$ grep -r CONFIG_MTD_PARTITIONS drivers/mtd/* | wc -l
+128
+</pre>
+
+<p>This is huge amount for a single configuration option. And we (the MTD
+community) have decided to kill this option. We do not accept patches which
+add more of these "<code>#ifdef CONFIG_MTD_PARTITIONS</code>" statements or
+shuffle them. Instead, someone have to make MTD partitions support to be
+integral part of the linux kenrel and thus, just remove the configuration
+option, and amend all the drivers which currently make use of it. In other
+words, if you want your driver/patch to go it, you are forced to do that
+clean-up. Sorry, this is more work for you, but this is the way the
+Linux development works.</p>
+
 <INCLUDE file="../inc/footer.tmpl" />
 </PAGE>

diff --git a/index.xml b/index.xml
index a362c207e56a1a153059c7c98f491e1f220d2897..d1de2a8e159e2865a1ceaf223aa9d306c4c857d1 100644 (file)
--- a/index.xml
+++ b/index.xml
@@ -24,6 +24,8 @@
        <hr size="2" />
        <h2>News</h2>
        <ul>
+       <li>18 Apr 2011: <code>CONFIG_MTD_PARTITIONS</code> is prohibited, see
+           <a href="doc/general.html#L_partitions_ban">here</a></li>
        <li>08 Apr 2011: UBIFS does not check data CRC by default starting from linux
            kernel version <code>2.6.39</code>, see <a href="doc/ubifs.html#L_checksumming">here</a></li>
        <li>02 Apr 2011: mtd-utils version <code>1.4.4</code> is out ("<code>flash_eraseall -j"</code>