Re: [PATCH RFC 0/2] Eliminate drive_get_next()

[Peter Maydell <peter.maydell@linaro.org>]

On Mon, 15 Nov 2021 at 12:55, Markus Armbruster <armbru@redhat.com> wrote:
>
> This is RFC because I'm unsure about the removal of
>
>     /* Reason: init() method uses drive_get_next() */
>     dc->user_creatable = false;
>
> in PATCH 1.  Both users appear to wire up some GPIO.  If that's
> necessary for the thing to work, we should just replace the comment.

Looking at the code, it sort of is and sort of isn't. The GPIO line
is the chip-select line. If you don't connect it then (because the
ssi-sd device configures cs_polarity to SSI_CS_LOW, requesting an
active-low chip-select) the device will always be selected. If
the machine created an SSI bus with no SSI device attached to it
then in theory the user could create an ssi-sd device and connect
it there and have it work. But in practice it's really unlikely:
machines create SSI buses with specific wired-in devices on them,
and the guest OS knows what it has to do to enable the chip select
for the device it wants to talk to (often some known GPIO pin on
a GPIO controller).

So I would keep the user_creatable = false, with a reason of
"user should wire up GPIO chip-select line". But see below for
a pile of contrary precedent.

(The chip-select GPIO is created in the parent class, incidentally.)

> Aside: there may be devices that need manual wiring to work, yet don't
> have user_creatable unset.  Bugs if you ask me.  I don't have smart
> ideas on how to track them down.

Me neither. I notice that the TYPE_M25P80 is also an SSI peripheral
with an active-low chipselect but that one doesn't set user_creatable
to false. TYPE_SSD0323 also is user-creatable and that one has an
active-high chipselect, which means the user can create a device but
it will then never be usable because it will ignore all transactions.
(More generally, looks like most subclasses of TYPE_SSI_PERIPHERAL
don't set user_creatable = false.)

-- PMM