[PATCH v6 0/22] On-demand device probing

[Greg Kroah-Hartman]

On Wed, Sep 30, 2015 at 12:09:27PM +0200, Tomeu Vizoso wrote:
> On 26 September 2015 at 21:22, Greg Kroah-Hartman
> <gregkh at linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
> > On Sat, Sep 26, 2015 at 01:17:04PM -0500, Rob Herring wrote:
> >> On 09/21/2015 09:02 AM, Tomeu Vizoso wrote:
> >> > Hello,
> >> >
> >> > I have a problem with the panel on my Tegra Chromebook taking longer
> >> > than expected to be ready during boot (Stéphane Marchesin reported what
> >> > is basically the same issue in [0]), and have looked into ordered
> >> > probing as a better way of solving this than moving nodes around in the
> >> > DT or playing with initcall levels and linking order.
> >> >
> >> > While reading the thread [1] that Alexander Holler started with his
> >> > series to make probing order deterministic, it occurred to me that it
> >> > should be possible to achieve the same by probing devices as they are
> >> > referenced by other devices.
> >> >
> >> > This basically reuses the information that is already implicit in the
> >> > probe() implementations, saving us from refactoring existing drivers or
> >> > adding information to DTBs.
> >> >
> >> > During review of v1 of this series Linus Walleij suggested that it
> >> > should be the device driver core to make sure that dependencies are
> >> > ready before probing a device. I gave this idea a try [2] but Mark Brown
> >> > pointed out to the logic duplication between the resource acquisition
> >> > and dependency discovery code paths (though I think it's fairly minor).
> >> >
> >> > To address that code duplication I experimented with Arnd's devm_probe
> >> > [3] concept of having drivers declare their dependencies instead of
> >> > acquiring them during probe, and while it worked [4], I don't think we
> >> > end up winning anything when compared to just probing devices on-demand
> >> > from resource getters.
> >> >
> >> > One remaining objection is to the "sprinkling" of calls to
> >> > of_device_probe() in the resource getters of each subsystem, but I think
> >> > it's the right thing to do given that the storage of resources is
> >> > currently subsystem-specific.
> >> >
> >> > We could avoid the above by moving resource storage into the core, but I
> >> > don't think there's a compelling case for that.
> >> >
> >> > I have tested this on boards with Tegra, iMX.6, Exynos, Rockchip and
> >> > OMAP SoCs, and these patches were enough to eliminate all the deferred
> >> > probes (except one in PandaBoard because omap_dma_system doesn't have a
> >> > firmware node as of yet).
> >> >
> >> > Have submitted a branch [5][6][7] with these patches on top of today's
> >> > linux-next (20150921) to kernelci.org and I don't see any issues that
> >> > could be caused by them.
> >> >
> >> > With this series I get the kernel to output to the panel in 0.5s,
> >> > instead of 2.8s.
> >>
> >> I think we're pretty close other than some minor comments. I would like
> >> to see ack's from Greg and some reviewed-bys from others. The subsystem
> >> changes are minor and there has been plenty of chance to comment, so I
> >> don't think acks from all subsystems are needed.
> >>
> >> Your branch is based on -next. Is there any dependence on something in
> >> -next? I want to get this into -next soon, but need a branch not based
> >> on -next. Please send me a pull request with the collected acks and
> >> minor comments I have addressed.
> >
> > Let me review this on Monday and I'll let you know...
> 
> Hi Greg, hope you don't mind that I ping you regarding this, just in
> case it fell through some crack.

It's on my todo list, sorry, am at a conference for the next few days,
didn't get to it on Monday, hopefully soon...

greg "my todo list is too long" k-h