On Fri, Feb 03, 2017 at 03:16:19PM -0800, Dmitry Torokhov wrote:
> Make it possible to use the bulk API with optional supplies, by allowing
> the consumer to marking supplies as optional in the regulator_bulk_data.

So, I know I took the version Bjorn sent before (which was subsequently
reverted) but based on further reflection and having seen people trying
to use it I really don't think this is a good idea and that the revert
was the best thing to do.  The idiomatic use of bulk operations is to
treat the entire block of regulators en masse, this is not possible when
some of the regulators are optional.  You *can* peer into the structure
and special case things but it then makes further uses of the bulk API
on the same block of regulators not work which isn't good.

As I said earlier making it easy to just transparently mix optional
regulators in is something I'd expect to see commonly associated with
abuse of the optional API as a mechanism for not implementing sensible
error handling.