Re: [PATCH v14 1/1] tty: serial: Add Nuvoton ma35d1 serial driver support

[Arnd Bergmann]

On Thu, Jun 15, 2023, at 12:19, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 13, 2023 at 05:44:23PM +0200, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
>> On Tue, Jun 13, 2023, at 16:49, Greg KH wrote:
>> I don't see how Jacky can come up with a patch to do this correctly
>> without more specific guidance to what exactly you are looking for,
>> after the last 123 people that added support for a new port got
>> that merged.
>
> I keep complaining about this, when I notice it.  Just use the "default"
> port type in the serial driver and don't add a new type here and it
> should just work, right?
>
>> I checked debian codesearch and found only three obscure packages that
>> accidentally include this header instead of including linux/serial.h,
>> a couple of lists of all kernel headers, and none that include it on
>> purpose. I agree that this header should really not exist in uapi,
>> but the question is what exactly to do about it.
>> 
>> Possible changes would be:
>> 
>> - add a special value PORT_* constant other than PORT_UNKNOWN that
>>   can be used by serial drivers instead of a unique value, and
>>   ensure that the serial core can handle drivers using it.
>
> Why do we need a special constant?

The "default" value is 0, which translates to PORT_UNKNOWN, and the
serial core code prevents this from working. I think Jacky tried
to use this the last one or two times you commented on it, and
it did not work.

Setting it to a plain '1' as Jacky suggested in his reply is the
same as PORT_8250, which may or may not be a good choice here.

Since the number is exported to userspace in serial_struct,
it might be better to pick a new constant such as

#define PORT_SERIAL_GENERIC (-1)

in order to be less ambiguous. It's a signed integer, so -1
would work here this would clearly be a special value, or
another option might be to use 255 as something that is
slightly less special but still recognizable as something
that may have a special meaning.

      Arnd