Kconfig tristate literals are always lowercase ('n', 'y', 'm') and
uppercase N/Y/M are not Kconfig reserved words. Since undefined
symbols evaluate to 'n', writing 'default Y' or 'default M' silently
produces 'n' instead of 'y'/'m'. 'default N' happens to produce the
right value but is still invalid syntax.

Add a warning for N/Y/M in Kconfig expressions found by following
the same preprocessing logic used by the Kconfig parser itself.

This new warning was inspired by work done for [1].

Link: https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=216748 [1]
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-sonnet-4-6
Signed-off-by: Andrew Jones <andrew.jones@linux.dev>
---

Fixes such as [2] have already been posted for a few uses.
[2] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20260513162758.365972-1-andriy.shevchenko@linux.intel.com/

 scripts/checkpatch.pl | 15 +++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 15 insertions(+)

diff --git a/scripts/checkpatch.pl b/scripts/checkpatch.pl
index 3727156e4cca..aae6c3e7aa51 100755
--- a/scripts/checkpatch.pl
+++ b/scripts/checkpatch.pl
@@ -3732,6 +3732,21 @@ sub process {
 			}
 		}
 
+# check for uppercase N/Y/M used as Kconfig tristate literals
+		if ($realfile =~ /Kconfig/ &&
+		    $line =~ /^\+\s*(?:default|def_bool|def_tristate|select|imply|depends\s+on|visible\s+if|range|if)\s+(.+)$/) {
+			my $expr = $1;
+			$expr =~ s/#.*//;		# strip inline comments
+			$expr =~ s/\$\(.*\)//g;	# strip $(macro) expansions
+			$expr =~ s/"[^"]*"//g;		# strip "quoted strings"
+			$expr =~ s/'[^']*'//g;		# strip 'quoted strings'
+			for my $tok (split /[^A-Za-z0-9_]+/, $expr) {
+				next unless ($tok eq 'Y' || $tok eq 'M' || $tok eq 'N');
+				WARN("KCONFIG_TRISTATE_UPPERCASE",
+				     "'$tok' is probably not what you want here; Kconfig tristate literals are always lowercase ('n', 'y', 'm')\n" . $herecurr);
+			}
+		}
+
 # check MAINTAINERS entries
 		if ($realfile =~ /^MAINTAINERS$/) {
 # check MAINTAINERS entries for the right form
-- 
2.43.0

On Wed, May 13, 2026 at 03:57:45PM -0500, Andrew Jones wrote:
> Kconfig tristate literals are always lowercase ('n', 'y', 'm') and
> uppercase N/Y/M are not Kconfig reserved words. Since undefined
> symbols evaluate to 'n', writing 'default Y' or 'default M' silently
> produces 'n' instead of 'y'/'m'. 'default N' happens to produce the
> right value but is still invalid syntax.
> 
> Add a warning for N/Y/M in Kconfig expressions found by following
> the same preprocessing logic used by the Kconfig parser itself.
> 
> This new warning was inspired by work done for [1].

Acked-by: Andy Shevchenko <andriy.shevchenko@linux.intel.com>

-- 
With Best Regards,
Andy Shevchenko