Re: [RFC PATCH devicetree 00/10] Do something about ls-extirq interrupt-map breakage

[Vladimir Oltean <vladimir.oltean@nxp.com>]

On Thu, Mar 24, 2022 at 06:06:51PM +0000, Marc Zyngier wrote:
> > I was just raising this as what I thought would be a simple and
> > non-controversial counter example to your remark "If you change something,
> > you *must* guarantee forward *and* backward compatibility."
> 
> If you change something *in the binding*, which was implicit in the
> context, and makes no sense out of context.
> 
> > Practically speaking, what has happened is that the board DT appeared in
> > kernel N, the ls-extirq driver in kernel N+1, and the DT was updated to
> > enable PHY interrupts in kernel N+2. That DT update practically broke
> > kernel N from running correctly on DTs taken from kernel N+2 onwards.
> > This is the observable behavior, we can find as many justifications for
> > it as we wish.
> 
> Well, you can also argue that the DT was broken at N and N+1 for not
> describing the HW correctly and completely. No binding has changed
> here. Your DT was incomplete, and someone fixed it for you.
> 
> We can argue this things forever and a half. I've laid down the ground
> rules for the stuff I maintain. If you're not happy with this, you can
> fix it by either removing the NXP hardware from the tree, or taking
> over from me as the irqchip maintainer. I'd be perfectly happy with
> any (and even more, with both) of these outcomes.

Ok, my intention wasn't to inflame you even though the way in which I
presented the problem might have suggested otherwise.

With my developer hat I still don't agree with you even with the
additional clarification you've made that you were referring only to
bindings and not to any and all DT changes. The reason being that the DT
blob is a whole, and it doesn't matter if there's a regression because
of a binding change or something else, you still need to be prepared to
update it, sometimes in lockstep with the kernel, like it or not.

But as a user, I just wanted to get an opinion from you what can we do
to deal better with this situation: optional interrupt provided by
device with missing driver, which of_irq_get() doesn't seem to understand.
There are more angles to this than just "new DT with old kernel". It can
also be new kernel, but ls-extirq driver disabled, and I still see that
as a kernel <-> DT compatibility concern.