Re: [patch,rfc] make depencies on header files explicit

[Tim Schmielau]

On Fri, 5 Jul 2002, Sandy Harris wrote:

> I thought conventional wisdom was that header files should never #include
> other headers, and .c files should explicitly #include all headers they
> need.
> 
> Googling on "nested header" turns up several style guides that agree:
> http://www.cs.mcgill.ca/resourcepages/indian-hill.html
> http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/lab/secondyear/cstyle/node5.html
> 
> and others that say it is controversial, can be done either way:
> http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/C-faq/q10.7.html
> 
> Am I just off base in relation to kernel coding style? Or would getting
> rid of header file nesting be a useful objective.

Avoiding nested headers certainly results in the smallest set of header 
files actually #included.
However, I think it's just not feasible with the kernel: many files would
start with a list of some hundred includes, and I can't imagine a 
reasonable way to document the dependencies between them.

Tim