[PATCH v2 6/6] pintrl: meson: add support for GPIO interrupts

Tue May 16 11:31:40 PDT 2017

Am 16.05.2017 um 09:54 schrieb Neil Armstrong:
> Hi Heiner,
> 
> On 05/15/2017 09:00 PM, Heiner Kallweit wrote:
>> Am 15.05.2017 um 10:05 schrieb Neil Armstrong:
>>> On 05/12/2017 09:14 PM, Heiner Kallweit wrote:
>>>> Add support for GPIO interrupts on Amlogic Meson SoC's.
>>>>
>>>> There's a limit of 8 parent interupts which can be used in total.
>>>> Note that IRQ_TYPE_EDGE_BOTH interrupts reserve two parent IRQ's,
>>>> one for each edge.
>>>>
>>>> Signed-off-by: Heiner Kallweit <hkallweit1 at gmail.com>
>>>> ---
>>>> v2:
>>>> - make the GPIO IRQ controller a separate driver
>>>> - several smaller improvements
>>>> ---
>>>>  drivers/pinctrl/Kconfig                   |   1 +
>>>>  drivers/pinctrl/meson/Makefile            |   2 +-
>>>>  drivers/pinctrl/meson/pinctrl-meson-irq.c | 367 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>>>
>>> Hi Heiner,
>>>
>>> This code has nothing to do with GPIOs on pinmux handling here, what we figured with Jerome
>>> is that this must be an independent IRQ Controller in drivers/irqchip.
>>>
>> I'm not convinced and would like to hear more opinions on that. I see it like this:
>> The driver implements an irqchip, right. But it's not an interrupt controller.
>> Due to using GPIOLIB_IRQCHIP the gpio controller now has an own irq domain (one for ao
>> and one for periphs GPIO domain). Therefore the gpio-controller now also acts as
>> interrupt-controller. And both gpio (and interrupt) controllers just use the irqchip
>> exposed by the new driver.
>> Last but not least the irqchip can be used with GPIOs only.
> 
> In fact it's an interrupt controller since it can mask/unmask and control a singal that
> can wake up an interrupt for the ARM Core.
> 
> Please look at the STM32 EXTI code, the design is quite similar except they don't have a
> dynamic management of links, but fixed ones.
> They have a proper independant IRQCHIP driver and a link from the pinctrl driver, and this
> should be the right design.
> They have a flaw since they do the mapping from the gpio_to_irq, and Linus won't allow
> this anymore.
> 
At first I involve Rob as he also provided feedback regarding the DT part.

I had a look at the STM32 EXTI code and it looks very similar to Jerome's version.
Actually I'd assume that the first Meson driver attempt was modeled after STM32 EXTI.

As you just mentioned there are at least two issues:
1. The mapping can be requested via gpio_to_irq but it doesn't have to. A driver could
   also request a GPIO IRQ via DT.
2. Missing is the handling of IRQ_TYPE_EDGE_BOTH which requires the allocation of two
   parent interrupts.

When looking at the drivers under drivers/irqchip basically all of them implement not
only an irqchip but also an IRQ domain. Providing an IRQ domain seems to me to be
the main criteria whether something should be considered an interrupt controller
(please correct me if this understanding is wrong).

The STM32 EXTI drivers seems to me to be unnecessarily complex due to not using
GPIOLIB_IRQCHIP. This GPIO framework extension can hide a significant part of the
GPIO IRQ complexity.

Coming back to my version:
The new driver just implements an irqchip, no IRQ domain. This irqchip then is
provided to the IRQ domains bound to the respective gpio controllers (for AO and PERIPHS
GPIO domain) - thanks to GPIOLIB_IRQCHIP handling of the IRQ domains comes for free.

Adding the interrupt-controller property to the gpio-controller nodes is one thing
still missing in my patch series. Then a driver can request a GPIO IRQ also via DT, e.g.:

interrupt-parent = <&gpio>;
interrupts = <GPIOZ_0 IRQ_TYPE_EDGE_BOTH>;

interrupt-parent = <&gpio_ao>;
interrupts = <GPIOAO_0 IRQ_TYPE_EDGE_BOTH>;

Advantage of having an IRQ domain per GPIO controller is being able to to use the GPIO
defines as is. Or in other words:
GPIOAO_0 and GPIOZ_0 both have the value 0. This works here due to having one IRQ domain
per GPIO controller (both using the same new irqchip).

And all I had to do is implementing one irq_chip and changing one line in the existing
pinctrl driver.
Whilst I have to admit that e.g. calling request_irq for a parent irq from the irq_set_type
callback may be something people find ugly and hacky.

Compared to this implementation the STM32 EXTI drivers needs significantly more data
structures, e.g. irqchip + irq domain in the irqchip driver, then hierarchical IRQ domain
handling + further irqchip and irq domain + irq domain ops in the pinctrl driver.

Last but not least coming back to the initial talk with Rob about where to best place the
DT docu for this irqchip implementation:
If acceptable I'd prefer to do it like .e.g in bindings/pinctrl/allwinner,sunxi-pinctrl.txt
or bindings/pinctrl/atmel,at91-pio4-pinctrl.txt.
There the interrupt-controller properties are documented as part of the pinctrl driver and
not separately under bindings/interrupt-controller.

Maybe this explains a little bit better why I chose this approach.

Rgds, Heiner

>>
>> In the irqchip implementation we need the SoC-specific mapping from GPIO number
>> to internal GPIO IRQ number. Having to export this from drivers/pinctrl/meson for use
>> under drivers/irqchip most likely would also cause objections.
> 
> You won't need, this interrupt controller will take the number either from DT either
> from a mapping creating from the pinctrl driver. The link will only be through the
> irq subsystem.
> 
>>
>> So far my impression is that the very specific way GPIO IRQ's are handled on Meson
>> doesn't fit perfectly into the current IRQ subsystem. Therefore the discussion
>> about Jerome's version didn't result in the IRQ maintainers stating: do it this way ..
>> Having said that most likely every possible approach is going to raise some concerns.
> 
> It doesn't fit exactly, but the subsystem can certainly be used to achieve it either by
> using all it's capacity or by eventually discussing with the maintainers to adapt it.
> 
> Jerome has some hints hot to achieve the pinctrl part with everyone "happy".
> 
>>
>>> Please move it and make independent, you should be able to request irqs without any links
>>> to the pinmux/gpio since physically the GPIO lines input are always connected to this
>>> irq controller, and the pinmux has no impact on the interrupt management here.
>>> >From the GPIO-IRQ Controller perspective, the GPIOs are only a number and the pinmux code
>>> is only here to make the translation to a specific GPIO to a GPIO-IRQ number.
>>>
>>> For more chance to have it upstreamed in the right way, we should :
>>> 1) Collaborate, we can chat over IRC, maybe Slack, E-mail, skype, forums, ...
>>> 2) Push an independent IRQ controller that matches the capacity of the HW
>>> 3) Push a link from the pinctrl driver to have the to_gpio_irq mapping done in the right way
>>>
>>> Jerome spent quite a lot of time and had a chat with the IRQ subsystem maintainers to have s
>>> clear image of how this should be implemented, and it would be a good point to actually
>>> have a chat with them to elaborate find a strong solution.
>>>
>> I know and I really appreciate Jerome's work and his discussion with the IRQ maintainers.
>> My current attempt was inspired by his work.
>> However the discussion last year ended w/o result and the topic of GPIO IRQs has been dead
>> since then. And I think discussing approaches works best based on a concrete piece of code.
>> Therefore I submitted my version as discussion basis. I didn't expect that everybody would
>> be totally happy with it and it would go to mainline unchanged.
> 
> Sure, thanks for the work,
> 
>>
>>> I'm sorry to say that pushing this code without really understanding how and why will lead to
>>> nothing expect frustration from everybody.
>>>
>> I can only speak for myself: I'm not frustrated and I can live with critical review comments.
> 
> Great ! Anyway thanks for your work and I hope this will lead to mainline !
> 
>> Regards, Heiner
>>
>>> Neil
> 
> Neil
> 
> [...]
> 