[PATCH 3/4] arm64: add support for i.MX8M EVK board

[Lucas Stach]

Am Donnerstag, den 25.01.2018, 18:49 +0800 schrieb Dong Aisheng:
> On 2018-01-25 18:31, Lucas Stach wrote:
> > Am Donnerstag, den 25.01.2018, 18:10 +0800 schrieb 
> > aisheng.dong at codeaurora.org:
[...]
> AFAIK we switched to generic pinconfig since MX7ULP as maintainer 
> > > won't
> > > access old binding pinctrl drivers.
> > 
> > I'm not convinced that the generic pinconf is good fit. For pingroups
> > with different configs for some of the pins, like the example above, we
> > would need to split things into multiple DT nodes. This really hurts
> > readability, so I'm not going to switch to the generic stuff without
> > some really convincing arguments.
> > 
> 
> Per my understanding, based on the last discussion with Linus W, we 
> actually did this in order to increase the readability that 1) user does
> not need to see the 'ugly' unreadable raw data and refer to reference
> manual 2) unified generic binding format which already exist in kernel
> and used by many platforms.
> 
> Actually MXS platform already used it for many years in a similar way.
> So IMHO a little hurt to add another node for different pad setting in 
> the same group won't be enough reason to stop switching to generic config.
> 
> Does it make sense?

I know that Linus W is pushing for this common pinconf thing in the
name of readability. It's just that I don't think it's such a clear
win.

After all you still need to look into the reference manual or binding
to see which values in the common binding correspond to a specific
drive/pull strength, etc.

On the other hand it really bloats the DT description of the pin
configuration. If you want to look at an (IMHO) bad example, go look at
the Tegra DTs. The Tegra pincontrol implements the "separate properties
for each pinconf option" that is pushed by Linus W. This bloated the DT
description to the point that no-one is able/willing to write those
descriptions anymore and the only viable way to get them is to auto-
generate them from some spreadsheets. Not really what I would call an
readable...

Maybe I'm a little stubborn when it comes to this topic, but at
Pengutronix we see a lot of customer designs where we need to come up
with the board DT. Bloating each one of those and making the work of
the developers harder in the name of a readability win that I just
don't see doesn't sound like something I want to support. :)
	
Regards,
Lucas