linux-next regression caused by "gpiolib: request the gpio before querying its direction"

[Geert Uytterhoeven]

Hi Thomas,

On Thu, Aug 31, 2017 at 9:18 AM, Thomas Petazzoni
<thomas.petazzoni at free-electrons.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 31 Aug 2017 09:08:45 +0200, Linus Walleij wrote:
>> > However, even the "reference" pinctrl-single.c implementation does it,
>> > in pcs_request_gpio().
>>
>> Yeah so we have unclear semantics on this and that is just a fact of
>> life. It's a bit of pain as maintainer because I sometimes don't know
>> what to do when something makes superficial sense and the only thing
>> I can do is to toss it into linux-next and see what happens.
>>
>> Look what happened :D
>>
>> If the semantics should be changed, all drivers must be changed consistently
>> in a larger patch series, so until then, we revert this and leave it as it is.
>>
>> Now this is reverted anyways.
>
> Thanks for taking action on this. Regarding the semantics, the
> kerneldoc comment says:
>
>  * @gpio_request_enable: requests and enables GPIO on a certain pin.
>  *      Implement this only if you can mux every pin individually as GPIO. The
>  *      affected GPIO range is passed along with an offset(pin number) into that
>  *      specific GPIO range - function selectors and pin groups are orthogonal
>  *      to this, the core will however make sure the pins do not collide.
>  * @gpio_disable_free: free up GPIO muxing on a certain pin, the reverse of
>  *      @gpio_request_enable
>
> So the ->gpio_request_enable() comment is not super clear, but the
> ->gpio_disable_free() explicitly says "free up GPIO muxing", which
> would mean the ->gpio_request_enable() hook has muxed the pin as GPIO.
> Things could be clearer, but I believe it's quite clear the intent is
> that the ->gpio_request_enable() should mux the pin as a GPIO at the HW
> level.

It does say "if you can mux ... as GPIO".
And ->gpio_disable_free() is "the reverse of ->gpio_request_enable()".

> Note that on my side, I've however not been convinced by this semantic:
> I find it weird that when you request a GPIO, it gets automatically
> muxed as such, without an explicit pinctrl configuration in the DT.

On lots of hardware, you first have to select between GPIO and "other
function".
For "other function", you have to select the actual function later.
In that case, switching to a GPIO can be done by flipping a single bit.

Your hardware may vary, though.

In addition, you can claim GPIOs from anywhere, including from userspace.
While in-kernel drivers could be forced to specify a pinctrl config, that's not
so easy to require from userspace.

Gr{oetje,eeting}s,

                        Geert

--
Geert Uytterhoeven -- There's lots of Linux beyond ia32 -- geert at linux-m68k.org

In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But
when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that.
                                -- Linus Torvalds