(EXT) Re: [PATCH V2 4/5] arm64: dts: imx8mm-beacon: Enable OV5640 Camera

[Laurent Pinchart]

Hi Alexander,

On Tue, Nov 23, 2021 at 08:38:47AM +0100, Alexander Stein wrote:
> Am Dienstag, dem 23.11.2021 um 02:15 +0200 schrieb Laurent Pinchart:
> > On Sun, Nov 21, 2021 at 09:07:26PM -0600, Adam Ford wrote:
> > > On Sun, Nov 21, 2021 at 5:18 PM Laurent Pinchart wrote:
> > > > On Sat, Nov 06, 2021 at 10:54:26AM -0500, Adam Ford wrote:
> > > > > The baseboard has support for a TDNext 5640 Camera which
> > > > > uses an OV5640 connected to a 2-lane CSI2 interface.
> > > > > 
> > > > > With the CSI and mipi_csi2 drivers pointing to an OV5640 camera, the media
> > > > > pipeline can be configured with the following:
> > > > > 
> > > > >     media-ctl --links "'ov5640 1-003c':0->'imx7-mipi-csis.0':0[1]"
> > > > > 
> > > > > The camera and various nodes in the pipeline can be configured for UYVY:
> > > > >     media-ctl -v -V "'ov5640 1-003c':0 [fmt:UYVY8_1X16/640x480 field:none]"
> > > > >     media-ctl -v -V "'csi':0 [fmt:UYVY8_1X16/640x480 field:none]"
> > > > > 
> > > > > Signed-off-by: Adam Ford <aford173 at gmail.com>
> > > > 
> > > > As the ov5640 is on an add-on module, would a DT overlay be better ?
> > > 
> > > At least for the Beacon / LogicPD boards, I would prefer to avoid the
> > > overlays.  We have an i.M6Q and an OMAP3 board with cameras enabled in
> > > our development kit device trees.  If the cameras are not connected,
> > > they just display a message that the cameras are not communicating and
> > > move on.  I'm OK with that.
> > 
> > You know the board better than I do, so I won't push against this, but I
> > still think it may not lead to the best user experience, especially if a
> > user wanted to connect a different sensor to the development board.
> 
> I see the advantages of overlays compared to "stacked" .dts files. But
> is there any general supported interface how to actually apply an overlay?
> Documentation/devicetree/overlay-notes.rst
> states of_overlay_fdt_apply() but there is only exactly one user in-
> kernel (rcar-du). Is it expected that the bootloader like u-boot shall
> apply the .dtbo files?

I believe the boot loader is expected to apply overlays nowadays, yes.
That's my personal workflow.

-- 
Regards,

Laurent Pinchart