The 'choice' statement is primarily used to exclusively select one
option, but the 'optional' property allows all entries to be disabled.
In the following example, both A and B can be disabled simultaneously:
choice
prompt "choose A, B, or nothing"
optional
config A
bool "A"
config B
bool "B"
endchoice
You can achieve the equivalent outcome by other means.
A common solution is to add another option to guard the choice block.
In the following example, you can set ENABLE_A_B_CHOICE=n to disable
the entire choice block:
choice
prompt "choose A or B"
depends on ENABLE_A_B_CHOICE
config A
bool "A"
config B
bool "B"
endchoice
Another approach is to insert one more entry:
choice
prompt "choose A, B, or disable both"
config A
bool "A"
config B
bool "B"
config DISABLE_A_AND_B
bool "choose this to disable both A and B"
endchoice
Some real examples are DEBUG_INFO_NONE, INITRAMFS_COMPRESSION_NONE,
LTO_NONE, etc.
The 'optional' property is even more unnecessary for a tristate choice.
Without the 'optional' property, you can disable A and B; you can set
'm' in the choice prompt, and disable A and B individually:
choice
prompt "choose one built-in or make them modular"
config A
tristate "A"
config B
tristate "B"
endchoice
In conclusion, the 'optional' property was unneeded.
Signed-off-by: Masahiro Yamada <masahiroy@kernel.org>
Reviewed-by: Nicolas Schier <n.schier@avm.de>
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