Re: [PATCH v8 03/10] arm_ffa: introduce Arm FF-A low-level driver

[Simon Glass <sjg@chromium.org>]

Hi Tom,

On Thu, 19 Jan 2023 at 09:57, Tom Rini <trini@konsulko.com> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Jan 19, 2023 at 09:54:29AM -0700, Simon Glass wrote:
> > Hi Sudeep,
> >
> > On Thu, 19 Jan 2023 at 09:46, Sudeep Holla <sudeep.holla@arm.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > Hi Abdellatif,
> > >
> > > On Thu, Jan 19, 2023 at 04:31:57PM +0000, Abdellatif El Khlifi wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Hi Simon, Tom,
> > > >
> > > > The FF-A transport is a SW bus and is not associated to any HW peripheral or
> > > > undiscoverable base address.
> > > >
> > > > There is only 1 way of discovering the FF-A bus and it's through the FF-A SW
> > > > interfaces. The FF-A spec [1] describes this in details.
> > > >
> > > > Discovering means gathering information about the FF-A framework such as:
> > > > the FF-A version, supported features, secure partitions number and attributes.
> > > >
> > > > Please refer to the following paragraphs for more details: [2], [3], [4], [5]
> > > >
> > > > The core driver provided by this patchset implements the Setup and discovery interfaces
> > > > in addition to direct messaging.
> > > >
> > > > The driver provides ffa_bus_discover() API that allows to discover the FF-A bus
> > > > as described by the spec and in the FF-A driver readme [6].
> > > >
> > > > We expect and highly recommend FF-A users to always discover the FF-A bus using ffa_bus_discover() API.
> > > >
> > >
> > > Thanks for the details. But IIRC this discussion is not about the FF-A bus
> > > and device(partitions) discovery, but the support for FF-A itself. The
> > > discussion is about where to have a device node to represent the existence of
> > > FF-A support on a platform. If we are talking about individual partitions
> > > (devices) in the device tree, then that is pure stupidity as it goes out
> > > of since with the firmware the moment a partition is added or removed in
> > > the firmware.
> > >
> > > IIUC, the whole discussion was around whether to use FFA_VERSION as the
> > > discovery mechanism for existence of FF-A support on a platform or you
> > > have a device node to specify the same.
> >
> > No, with respect, that is not quite the situation here.
> >
> > >
> > > Just to be clear, even if it is decided to add a device node, the
> > > FFA_VERSION must be used to detect the presence of FF-A support and
> > > return error otherwise. DT node presence is just to satisfy the design
> > > and must be treated as no auto-confirmation for the presence of FF-A
> > > support. We are just arguing the device node presence is just redundant,
> > > but as mentioned before it is up to U-Boot community to make a call on
> > > what is best.
> >
> > U-Boot driver model design already supports this. You can have a
> > device that binds (from DT) but will not probe because it is not
> > present / wrong version. Perhaps this was missed in the conversion to
> > Linux:
> >
> > https://u-boot.readthedocs.io/en/latest/develop/driver-model/design.html#driver-lifecycle
> >
> > So there is nothing clever needed here at all and anything you do just
> > adds confusion and bad precedent.
>
> But it's also true that at run-time, within U-Boot, we can modify the
> device tree we have, with live tree yes? So, the whole series in
> question here can be done without modifying the base DT and getting in
> to the further discussions that doing so entails. The assertion is that
> the software discoverable bus here is sufficient to not need DT, so, OK,
> lets go.

One of the reasons that I find this all so frustrating is that it is
circular logic:

1. Device-tree bindings are controlled by Linux; U-Boot cannot upstream bindings
2. We can only have upstreamed bindings in any device tree

We have invented a whole u-boot.dtsi feature in U-Boot to hold
modifications from Linux. Board vendors have been suffering with this
for years.

It is not fair and it really needs to stop. I am doing what I can to
upstream some basic U-Boot bindings and I hope that will work and can
lead to a healthier relationship here.

Regards,
Simon