Re: [PATCH v7 1/3] Documentation: common clk API

["Turquette, Mike" <mturquette@ti.com>]

On Sat, Mar 17, 2012 at 2:05 AM, Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de> wrote:
> On Friday 16 March 2012, Turquette, Mike wrote:
>> On Fri, Mar 16, 2012 at 3:21 PM, Paul Walmsley <paul@pwsan.com> wrote:
>> > From: Paul Walmsley <paul@pwsan.com>
>> > Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2012 16:06:30 -0600
>> > Subject: [PATCH] clk: mark the common clk code as EXPERIMENTAL for now
>> >
>> > Mark the common clk code as depending on CONFIG_EXPERIMENTAL.  The API
>> > is not well-defined and both it and the underlying mechanics are likely
>> > to need significant changes to support non-trivial uses of the rate
>> > changing code, such as DVFS with external I/O devices.  So any platforms
>> > that switch their implementation over to this may need to revise much
>> > of their driver code and revalidate their implementations until the
>> > behavior of the code is better-defined.
>> >
>> > A good time for removing this EXPERIMENTAL designation would be after at
>> > least two platforms that do DVFS on groups of external I/O devices have
>> > ported their clock implementations over to the common clk code.
>> >
>> > Signed-off-by: Paul Walmsley <paul@pwsan.com>
>> > Cc: Mike Turquette <mturquette@ti.com>
>>
>> ACK.  This will set some reasonable expectations while things are in flux.
>>
>> Arnd are you willing to take this in?
>
> I think it's rather pointless, because the option is not going to
> be user selectable but will get selected by the platform unless I'm
> mistaken. The platform maintainers that care already know the state
> of the framework. Also, there are no user space interfaces that we
> have to warn users about not being stable, because the framework
> is internal to the kernel.

The consensus seems to be to not set experimental.

> However, I wonder whether we need the patch below to prevent
> users from accidentally enabling COMMON_CLK on platforms that
> already provide their own implementation.
>
>        Arnd
>
> diff --git a/drivers/clk/Kconfig b/drivers/clk/Kconfig
> index 2eaf17e..a0a83de 100644
> --- a/drivers/clk/Kconfig
> +++ b/drivers/clk/Kconfig
> @@ -12,7 +12,7 @@ config HAVE_MACH_CLKDEV
>
>  menuconfig COMMON_CLK
> -       bool "Common Clock Framework"
> +       bool
>        select HAVE_CLK_PREPARE
>        ---help---
>          The common clock framework is a single definition of struct
>          clk, useful across many platforms, as well as an

Much like experimental I'm not sure how needed this change is.  The
help section does say to leave it disabled by default, if unsure.  If
you merge it I won't object but this might be fixing an imaginary
problem.

Regards,
Mike