Re: [PATCH RFC 4/6] net: rfkill: gpio: add device tree support

[Linus Walleij <linus.walleij-QSEj5FYQhm4dnm+yROfE0A@public.gmane.org>]

On Tue, Jan 21, 2014 at 4:11 AM, Alexandre Courbot <gnurou-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org> wrote:
> On Sat, Jan 18, 2014 at 8:11 AM, Linus Walleij <linus.walleij-QSEj5FYQhm4dnm+yROfE0A@public.gmane.org> wrote:

>> gpio = devm_gpiod_get_index(&pdev->dev, NULL, 0);
>> gpio = devm_gpiod_get_index(&pdev->dev, NULL, 1);
>>
>> Heikki, are you OK with this change?
>>
>> I think this is actually necessary if the ACPI and DT unification
>> pipe dream shall limp forward, we cannot have arguments passed
>> that have a semantic effect on DT but not on ACPI... Drivers
>> that are supposed to use both ACPI and DT will always
>> have to pass NULL as con ID.
>
> I agree that's how it should be be done with the current API if your
> driver can obtain GPIOs from both ACPI and DT. This is a potential
> issue, as drivers are not supposed to make assumptions about who is
> going to be their GPIO provider. Let's say you started a driver with
> only DT in mind, and used gpio_get(dev, con_id) to get your GPIOs. DT
> bindings are thus of the form "con_id-gpio = <phandle>", and set in
> stone. Then later, someone wants to use your driver with ACPI. How do
> you handle that gracefully?

Short answer is you can't. You have to pour backward-compatibility
code into the driver first checking for that property and then falling
back to the new binding if it doesn't exist.

> I'm starting to wonder, now that ACPI is a first-class GPIO provider,
> whether we should not start to encourage the deprecation of the
> "con_id-gpio = <phandle>" binding form in DT and only use a single
> indexed GPIO property per device.

You have a valid point.

> The con_id parameter would then only
> be used as a label, which would also have the nice side-effect that
> all GPIOs used for a given function will be reported under the same
> name no matter what the GPIO provider is.

As discussed earlier in this thread I'm not sure the con_id is
suitable for labelling GPIOs. It'd be better to have a proper name
specified in DT/ACPI instead.

> From an aesthetic point of view, I definitely prefer using con_id to
> identify GPIOs instead of indexes, but I don't see how we can make it
> play nice with ACPI. Thoughts?

Let's ask the DT maintainers...

I'm a bit sceptic to the whole ACPI-DT-API-should-be-unified
just-one-function-call business, as this was just a very simple example
of what can happen to something as simple as
devm_gpiod_get[_index]().

Yours,
Linus Walleij