From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: grant.likely@secretlab.ca (Grant Likely) Date: Tue, 19 Nov 2013 14:33:18 +0000 Subject: ACPI vs DT at runtime In-Reply-To: <5289A356.4060004@jonmasters.org> References: <20131115095717.GC1709@e106331-lin.cambridge.arm.com> <5289A356. 4060004@jonmasters.org> Message-ID: <20131119143318.0FDB7C4079D@trevor.secretlab.ca> To: linux-arm-kernel@lists.infradead.org List-Id: linux-arm-kernel.lists.infradead.org On Mon, 18 Nov 2013 00:19:18 -0500, Jon Masters wrote: > > I think that trying to shoe-horn ACPI-derived information into device > > tree is fundamentally the wrong approach. I don't think it encourages > > best practices, and I don't think it's beneficial to the long term > > health of Linux or the ecosystem as a whole. > > It's going to be a messy thing to even attempt. Look, I wish we had a > time machine and could have done this whole thing years ago, but I'm not > sure it would have gone differently. ACPI is something a lot of people > emotionally hate. In the Enterprise space myself and others *need* it > (along with UEFI) to have a scalable solution that doesn't result in an > onslaught of customer support calls, which a non-standards body backed > moving target of DTB will do. I think that sells our entire community short. The Linux kernel itself is nowhere near standards body backed, and the userspace ABI is absolutely stable. It's stable because we've made stability a priority. Linus and others have been vocal about it, and maintainers have enforced it. Suggesting the lack of a standards body means we're left with a moving target is clearly not true. As much as we hoped ARM ACPI support would be complete by now and merged into the kernel, it isn't. I really can't fault (or expect) any hardware vendor to ship only ACPI when support for it isn't in mainline. As for DT, we discussed DT stability at length in Edinburgh. We've made the commitment to support shipped hardware. If hardware ships with a DT that boots on mainline, then we will not break it. > And besides all of the big boys are going > to be using ACPI whether it's liked much or not. I have to call that statement out as over the line. It comes across as attempting to shame maintainers into accepting ACPI, and further implies that non-ACPI users are not "big boys" and therefore just playing around. That is not okay. The ACPI support patches must satisfy maintainers before they will be accepted. This is normal and we've done this before. The current patches raise serious concerns, but they're also generating constructive feedback. If ACPI isn't there in time then we can support the hardware with DT, whether it is provided by the firmware (preferred), or shipped with the kernel. g.