[PATCH v4 3/4] gpio: Add find GPIO base in increasing order

[Linus Walleij]

On Wed, Jan 14, 2015 at 9:17 AM, Alexandre Courbot <gnurou at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 14, 2015 at 5:13 PM, Linus Walleij <linus.walleij at linaro.org> wrote:
>> On Wed, Dec 10, 2014 at 9:51 AM, Alexandre Courbot <gnurou at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On Fri, Dec 5, 2014 at 12:38 PM, Zhou Wang <wangzhou.bry at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> In function gpiochip_find_base, base number of a GPIO controller
>>>> is found in decreasing order. ARCH_NR_GPIOS is used to define from
>>>> which number we begin to search for base number of a GPIO controller.
>>>>
>>>> In fact, ARCH_NR_GPIOS brings us some multiplatform problems, like:
>>>> http://www.spinics.net/lists/devicetree/msg60433.html
>>>>
>>>> This patch adds the support to find base number of a GPIO controller
>>>> in increasing order. It will assign base number from 0.
>>>> A new dts property called gpio-number-forward must be add to the related
>>>> GPIO dts nodes if you want it works well.
>>>
>>> Global GPIO numbers are a Linux-only concept, so your property should
>>> be named linux,gpio-number-forward.
>>>
>>> But even that way I don't think I like this idea. This just adds some
>>> more mess to how the GPIO number space is constructed, and it is
>>> already quite messy as it is. You have no guarantee over the probe
>>> order of your GPIO controllers, so they may very well be probed in a
>>> different order and end up with different base numbers anytime.
>>
>> Yup.
>>
>> The way stuff is usually forced ordered in device tree is to use
>> aliases, e.g.:
>>
>>         aliases {
>>                 serial0 = &pb1176_serial0;
>>                 serial1 = &pb1176_serial1;
>>                 serial2 = &pb1176_serial2;
>>                 serial3 = &pb1176_serial3;
>>                 serial4 = &fpga_serial;
>>         };
>>
>> By getting the alias ID with of_alias_get_id(np, "serial")
>> a certain serial port is assigned to be
>> 0, 1, 2 ...
>>
>> I think I could accept a tweak of this patch that will register
>> GPIOs beginning from 0 if and only if the alias mechanism is
>> used.
>>
>>         aliases {
>>                 gpio0 = &foo_gpio0;
>>                 gpio1 = &expander;
>>         };
>>
>>
>> The actual Linux-specific integer base will *NOT* be in the
>> device tree, but if you know how many GPIOs are on each
>> controller the number space is still stable and predictable
>> beginning from 0. If one want to keep track of the Linux
>> number space one can do so with comments in the device
>> tree or something.
>>
>>> I know we pushed back against this kind of solution in the past, but
>>> it is still more reliable than having a property that affects how the
>>> kernel's base finding function works, and will offer us a way to
>>> eventually put ARCH_NR_GPIOS and gpiochip_find_base() to rest (at the
>>> cost of backwards-compatibility, but we just cannot do without it).
>>> Linus, do you agree?
>>
>> What do you think about the above?
>
> It would definitely help with the probe order, but unfortunately not
> with the fact that GPIO bases are allocated in decreasing order
> starting from the potentially varying ARCH_NR_GPIOS. So that alone
> will not be able to ensure stable GPIO numbers.

What I mean is that if and only if aliases are used, we
allocate GPIOs in ascending order starting at 0.

Let us remember why this is done: dynamic GPIO numbers are
allocated in descending order because it was assumed that some
static GPIOs are already allocated starting from 0, like on-chip
GPIOs.

We can also make it a Kconfig option, because for a large chunk
of systems only using device tree we can
actually allocate from zero. Notably any ARCH_MULTIPLATFORM
should just do this if we can make a quick survey of such systems
and see that they don't fool around setting .base in their GPIO
chips.

Yours,
Linus Walleij