[ros-dev] Compile-time vs. run-time configuration

[Casper Hornstrup]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ros-dev-bounces at reactos.com 
> [mailto:ros-dev-bounces at reactos.com] On Behalf Of Gregor Anich
> Sent: 10. december 2004 15:51
> To: ReactOS Development List
> Subject: Re: [ros-dev] Compile-time vs. run-time configuration
> 
> Please, look at the options in config.h... It's really meant 
> only for developers who are sick of the fucked up debug 
> output. If some user decides to play around with these 
> options (the other ones in the config.h are things like 
> "strict checking of the nonpaged pool on every allocation" or 
> "tracking of statistics about the tagged blocks in the pool" 
> and "whole-page allocations") it's really up to the user to 
> fix any problems which turn up because of changing these settings.
> After all this is a source file, and we don't have something 
> like "menuconfig" or just "config" which allows normal users 
> to edit it.

Let me refrase my question. Why would anyone want fucked up debug
output?

> 
> What do you not like about the compile-time configuration? 
> the ifdefs in the code or just that it's compile time?

Ifdefs are bad because the compiler skips parts of the sourcecode
like they were comments in certain configurations. This increases
the chance of non-compilable sourcecode getting into CVS. It should
be a goal to have the sourcecode in CVS compilable at all times so we
should develop ReactOS to make this easy for developers. Eventually
I'd like for ReactOS to have only one compile-time configuration - the
target architecture. Other configurations should be in the registry
or handled using another method. After all, that is what the registry
is there for. If there is only one compile-time configuration, the
developer can make sure it still compiles after his change by doing
a full build.

Casper