Re: [RFC][PATCH v3 1/3] runtime interpreted power sequences

From: Thierry Reding
Date: Tue Jul 31 2012 - 06:56:45 EST


On Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 07:32:20PM +0900, Alex Courbot wrote:
> On 07/31/2012 07:45 AM, Stephen Warren wrote:
> >I wonder if using the same structure/array as input and output would
> >simplify the API; the platform data would fill in the fields mentioned
> >above, and power_seq_build() would parse those, then set other fields in
> >the same structs to the looked-up handle values?
>
> The thing is that I am not sure what happens to the platform data
> once probe() is done. Isn't it customary to mark it with __devinit
> and have it freed after probing is successful?

No, platform data should stay around forever. Otherwise, consider what
would happen if your driver is built as a module and you unload and load
it again.

> More generally, I think it is a good practice to have data
> structures tailored right for what they need to do - code with
> members that are meaningful only at given points of an instance's
> life tends to be more confusing.

I agree. Furthermore the driver unload/reload would be another reason
not to reuse platform data as the output of the build() function.

But maybe what Stephen meant was more like filling a structure with data
taken from the platform data and pass that to a resolve() function which
would fill in the missing pieces like pointers to actual resources. I
imagine a managed interface would become a little trickier to do using
such an approach.

> >If the nodes have a unit address (i.e. end in "@n"), which they will
> >have to if all named "step" and there's more than one of them, then they
> >will need a matching reg property. Equally, the parent node will need
> >#address-cells and #size-cells too. So, the last couple lines would be:
> >
> > power-on-sequence {
> > #address-cells = <1>;
> > #size-cells = <0>;
> > step@0 {
> > reg = <0>;
>
> That's precisely what I would like to avoid - I don't need the steps
> to be numbered and I certainly have no use for a reg property. Isn't
> there a way to make it simpler?

It's not technically valid to not have the reg property. Or
#address-cells and #size-cells properties for that matter.

Thierry

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