Re: [PATCH v3 2/2] clocksource: Add support for Xilinx AXI Timer

[Sean Anderson <sean.anderson@seco.com>]

On 6/16/21 8:12 AM, Michal Simek wrote:
 > Hi Uwe,
 >
 > On 5/25/21 8:11 AM, Uwe Kleine-König wrote:
 >> Hello Sean, hello Michal,
 >>
 >> On Mon, May 24, 2021 at 09:00:51AM +0200, Michal Simek wrote:
 >>> On 5/20/21 10:13 PM, Sean Anderson wrote:
 >>>> On 5/19/21 3:24 AM, Michal Simek wrote:
 >>>>> On 5/18/21 12:15 AM, Sean Anderson wrote:
 >>>>>> This could be deprecated, but cannot be removed since existing device
 >>>>>> trees (e.g. qemu) have neither clocks nor clock-frequency properties.
 >>>>>
 >>>>> Rob: Do we have any obligation to keep properties for other projects?
 >>
 >> If a binding is in the wild and used to be documented, it has to stay.
 >>
 >>>>>>> 4. Make driver as module
 >>>>>>> 5. Do whatever changes you want before adding pwm support
 >>>>>>> 6. Extend DT binding doc for PWM support
 >>>>>>> 7. Add PWM support
 >>>>>>
 >>>>>> Frankly, I am inclined to just leave the microblaze timer as-is. The PWM
 >>>>>> driver is completely independent. I have already put too much effort into
 >>>>>> this driver, and I don't have the energy to continue working on the
 >>>>>> microblaze timer.
 >>>>>
 >>>>> I understand. I am actually using axi timer as pwm driver in one of my
 >>>>> project but never had time to upstream it because of couple of steps above.
 >>>>> We need to do it right based on steps listed above. If this is too much
 >>>>> work it will have to wait. I will NACK all attempts to add separate
 >>>>> driver for IP which we already support in the tree.
 >>>>
 >>>> 1. Many timers have separate clocksource and PWM drivers. E.g. samsung,
 >>>>     renesas TPU, etc. It is completely reasonable to keep separate
 >>>>     drivers for these purposes. There is no Linux requirement that each
 >>>>     device have only one driver, especially if it has multiple functions
 >>>>     or ways to be configured.
 >>>
 >>> It doesn't mean that it was done properly and correctly. Code
 >>> duplication is bad all the time.
 >>
 >> IMHO it's not so much about code duplication. Yes, code duplication is
 >> bad and should be prevented if possible. But it's more important to not
 >> introduce surprises. So I think it should be obvious from reading the
 >> device tree source which timer is used to provide the PWM. I don't care
 >> much if this is from an extra property (like xilinx,provide-pwm),
 >> overriding the compatible or some other explicit mechanism. IIUC in this
 >> suggested patch the selection is implicit and so this isn't so nice.
 >>
 >>>> 2. If you want to do work on a driver, I'm all for it. However, if you
 >>>>     have not yet submitted that work to the list, you should not gate
 >>>>     other work behind it. Saying that X feature must be gated behind Y
 >>>>     *even if X works completely independently of Y* is just stifling
 >>>>     development.
 >>>
 >>> I gave you guidance how I think this should be done. I am not gating you
 >>> from this work. Your patch is not working on Microblaze arch which is
 >>> what I maintain. And I don't want to go the route that we will have two
 >>> drivers for the same IP without integration. We were there in past and
 >>> it is just pain.
 >>> I am expecting that PWM guys will guide how this should be done
 >>> properly. I haven't heard any guidance on this yet.
 >>> Thierry/Uwe: Any comment?
 >>
 >> Not sure I can and want to provide guidance here. This is not Perl, but
 >> still TIMTOWTDI. If it was me who cared here, I'd look into the
 >> auxiliary bus (Documentation/driver-api/auxiliary_bus.rst) to check if
 >> it can help to solve this problem.
 >
 > I recently got patches for cadence TTC driver
 > (drivers/clocksource/timer-cadence-ttc.c) for PWM support too. It is the
 > second and very similar case. This driver is used on Zynq as clock
 > source and can be also use as PWM. I can't believe that there are no
 > other examples how to deal with these timers which are used for PWM
 > generation.
 >

The approach I took in v4 is that probe functions and driver callbacks
live in drivers/timer and drivers/pwm, and common functions live in
drivers/mfd (although I may move them to drivers/timer since Lee Jones
doesn't like them there).

I would greatly appreciate if you could review v4. It has been on the
list for three weeks now with no comments from either you or Uwe.

--Sean