On Thu, Mar 23, 2023 at 05:45:31PM +0000, Charles Keepax wrote:

> I think really the best place to look at this would be at the
> regulator level. It is fine if mfd_add_devices passes, the problem
> really is that the regulator core doesn't realise the regulator is
> going to be arriving, and thus returns a dummy regulator, rather
> than returning EPROBE_DEFER. If it did the MFD driver would probe
> defer at the point of requesting the regulator, which would all
> make sense.

You need the MFD to tell the regulator subsystem that there's a
regulator bound there, or to force all the users to explicitly do the
mapping of the regulator in their firmwares (which isn't really a
viable approach).