Re: [PATCH RESEND v2 1/4] pinctrl: Update Qualcomm pm8xxx GPIO parameters definitions

From: "Ivan T. Ivanov" <iivanov@mm-sol.com>
To: Stephen Boyd <sboyd@codeaurora.org>
Cc: Linus Walleij <linus.walleij@linaro.org>,
	Bjorn Andersson <bjorn.andersson@sonymobile.com>,
	Rob Herring <robh+dt@kernel.org>, Pawel Moll <pawel.moll@arm.com>,
	Mark Rutland <mark.rutland@arm.com>,
	Ian Campbell <ijc+devicetree@hellion.org.uk>,
	Kumar Gala <galak@codeaurora.org>,
	Mark Brown <broonie@kernel.org>,
	"devicetree@vger.kernel.org" <devicetree@vger.kernel.org>,
	"linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org" <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
	"linux-arm-msm@vger.kernel.org" <linux-arm-msm@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH RESEND v2 1/4] pinctrl: Update Qualcomm pm8xxx GPIO parameters definitions
Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2014 18:15:29 +0300	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <1406301329.2475.25.camel@iivanov-dev> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <53D1A371.1000108@codeaurora.org>

On Thu, 2014-07-24 at 17:23 -0700, Stephen Boyd wrote:
> On 07/24/14 08:40, Linus Walleij wrote:
> > On Thu, Jul 24, 2014 at 1:47 AM, Stephen Boyd <sboyd@codeaurora.org> wrote:
> >
> >>> Please add these constants to the table of valid power-source values and use
> >>> something like I did to translate them to register values - it makes the DT
> >>> much more readable.
> >> The DT could be similarly readable if we had a bunch of #defines for the
> >> different VIN settings that resolved to the final register value for
> >> that pmic. Something like PM8921_GPIO1_14_VPH, PM8921_GPIO19_36_VPH,
> >> etc. There would be a lot of them, but then the driver could be really
> >> simple and just jam whatever value is in the DT into the register
> >> without having to bounce through a mapping table in software to figure
> >> out the register value. If we did this for the functions also then I
> >> believe we achieve readability without requiring a bunch of drivers for
> >> each and every single pmic?
> > Not sure but it sounds like you want to make the device tree a jam table,
> > (know about individual register offsets, sequences etc). That has been
> > throrougly NACKed in the past, because DT is not Open Firmware.
> >
> > The exception is pinctrl-single which is restricted to single register
> > per pin use cases and is still a point of contention...
> >
> 
> I'm not proposing a jam table. I'm proposing that we make the
> function/source property convenient to the driver by having the actual
> function field value encoded there instead of some string that has to be
> translated through a table in a driver. There's still going to be
> shifting and masking of bits in the driver to put the value in the right
> place in the register, but we avoid needing N number of drivers for each
> pmic just to translate strings into integers (for functions) and
> integers into other integers (for the power source). 

This sounds good to me. Drawback is that we will have custom 
function parsing code, but I will try and see what that looks like.

Thanks,
Ivan

> From what I can
> tell there isn't any benefit to having the function property be a string
> vs. a #define number besides having a human readable string in pinctrl
> debugfs. Is there some other benefit?
> 