[PATCH 2 2/4] net ethernet introduce mac_la_ap helper

[Andy Green]

On 07/03/12 00:12, the mail apparently from Arnd Bergmann included:
> On Monday 02 July 2012, Andy Green wrote:
>> From: Andy Green <andy at warmcat.com>
>>
>> This introduces a small helper in net/ethernet, which registers a
>> network notifier on init, and accepts registrations of expected asynchronously-

> Yes, looks good to me in principle. It needs to get sent to the linux-kernel
> and netdev mailing lists for review though. A few small comments.

I wanted to hear that it had actually converged with what was being 
talked about first.  I just sent out a v3 with the relevant patch also 
cc-d to those lists but stg mail didn't seem to send it to them.  I'll 
wait for any further comments here and resend the whole thing including 
those lists.

> I find the name a bit non-obvious, not sure if we can come up with the
> perfect one.	
>
> How about mac-platform?

Done.

>>   endif   # if NET
>
> This one needs to be either a silent option (only selected by the
> platforms that want it) or the header file has to provide a
> static-inline fallback that does nothing, so we don't get
> a build failure on platforms that need it if the option gets
> disabled.
>
> I'd prefer making it a silent option because then we don't bloat
> the kernel if someone accidentally enables it on a platform that
> does not use it.

Done.  It's already added as a select on the Panda board config.

I also moved it out of the "if NET" clause and took care about the case 
that CONFIG_NET is off but we still have mac-platform references.

>> +static struct mac_la_ap mac_la_ap_list;
>
> The normal way to do this is to have just a list head that the
> entries get added to:
>
> static LIST_HEAD(mac_la_ap_list);
>
> That also takes care of the initialization.

Thanks for normalizing it, done.

>> +DEFINE_MUTEX(mac_la_ap_mutex);
>> +bool mac_la_ap_started;
>
> These should all be static.

Right, done.

> I think it would be simpler to register the notifier from an
> initcall and drop the mac_la_ap_started variable.

That was my first approach, to structure it as a real driver.  I had 
tried a few likely-looking initcall levels but the init of the helper 
was coming after the init of the network code.

I found this time that core_initcall works, so I used that, dropped the 
flag.  But isn't it a bit tricky with these to know if the prerequisite 
you're trying to ensure is already initialized might not actually be at 
the same initcall level and you're working by accident?

>> +int mac_la_ap_register_device_macs(const struct mac_la_ap *macs)
>> +{
>
>> +}
>> +EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL(mac_la_ap_register_device_macs);
>
>
> I'm not sure if there is any point in exporting this function, my feeling
> is that it would only ever be called from built-in code. If we can call it
> from a module, we should probably also allow this file to be a loadable
> module as well.

Being a modular API for platform code to call doesn't make sense, I got 
rid of the export.

-Andy

-- 
Andy Green | TI Landing Team Leader
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