Re: [PATCH v4 0/8] Make fw_devlink=on more forgiving

From: Geert Uytterhoeven <geert@linux-m68k.org>
To: Saravana Kannan <saravanak@google.com>
Cc: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>,
	Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>,
	"Rafael J. Wysocki" <rafael@kernel.org>,
	Kevin Hilman <khilman@kernel.org>,
	Ulf Hansson <ulf.hansson@linaro.org>,
	Len Brown <len.brown@intel.com>, Len Brown <lenb@kernel.org>,
	Pavel Machek <pavel@ucw.cz>,
	Michael Turquette <mturquette@baylibre.com>,
	Stephen Boyd <sboyd@kernel.org>, Rob Herring <robh+dt@kernel.org>,
	Frank Rowand <frowand.list@gmail.com>,
	Marc Zyngier <maz@kernel.org>,
	Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>,
	"open list:DOCUMENTATION" <linux-doc@vger.kernel.org>,
	Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
	Linux PM list <linux-pm@vger.kernel.org>,
	linux-clk <linux-clk@vger.kernel.org>,
	"open list:OPEN FIRMWARE AND FLATTENED DEVICE TREE BINDINGS" 
	<devicetree@vger.kernel.org>,
	ACPI Devel Maling List <linux-acpi@vger.kernel.org>,
	Marek Szyprowski <m.szyprowski@samsung.com>,
	Android Kernel Team <kernel-team@android.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v4 0/8] Make fw_devlink=on more forgiving
Date: Sat, 6 Feb 2021 20:41:22 +0100	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAMuHMdXo+ShM3Ct2OSCscJwaLJ4rbytpA14=dR5q+3F9kJjNfw@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20210205222644.2357303-1-saravanak@google.com>

Hi Saravana,

On Fri, Feb 5, 2021 at 11:26 PM Saravana Kannan <saravanak@google.com> wrote:
> There are a lot of devices/drivers where they never have a struct device
> created for them or the driver initializes the hardware without ever
> binding to the struct device.
>
> This series is intended to avoid any boot regressions due to such
> devices/drivers when fw_devlink=on and also address the handling of
> optional suppliers.

Thanks for your series!

> Patch 5 sets up a generic API to handle drivers that never bind with
> their devices.
>
> Patch 6 through 8 update different frameworks to use the new API.

>   driver core: fw_devlink: Handle suppliers that don't use driver core
>   irqdomain: Mark fwnodes when their irqdomain is added/removed
>   PM: domains: Mark fwnodes when their powerdomain is added/removed
>   clk: Mark fwnodes when their clock provider is added/removed

I take it this is an automatic alternative for letting drivers set the
OF_POPULATED flag manually?

Is this actually safe?  It's not uncommon for a driver to register
multiple providers, sometimes even of different types (clock, genpd,
irq, reset[1], ...).
Can you be sure consumer drivers do not start probing while their
dependency is still busy registering providers?

[1] Which brings my attention to the fact that devlink does not consider
    "resets" properties yet.

Gr{oetje,eeting}s,

                        Geert

--
Geert Uytterhoeven -- There's lots of Linux beyond ia32 -- geert@linux-m68k.org

In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But
when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that.
                                -- Linus Torvalds