[PATCH v3 0/4] tty: TX helpers

[Ilpo Järvinen]

On Wed, 7 Sep 2022, Arnd Bergmann wrote:

> On Wed, Sep 7, 2022, at 12:16 PM, Ilpo Järvinen wrote:
> > On Wed, 7 Sep 2022, Jiri Slaby wrote:
> >> On 06. 09. 22, 13:30, Johan Hovold wrote:
> >> > On Tue, Sep 06, 2022 at 12:48:01PM +0200, Jiri Slaby wrote:
> >> > NAK
> >> 
> >> I'd love to come up with something nicer. That would be a function in
> >> serial-core calling hooks like I had [1] for example. But provided all those
> >> CPU workarounds/thunks, it'd be quite expensive to call two functions per
> >> character.
> >> 
> >> Or creating a static inline (having ± the macro content) and the hooks as
> >> parameters and hope for optimizations to eliminate thunks (also suggested in
> >> the past [1]).
> >> 
> >> [1] https://lore.kernel.org/all/20220411105405.9519-1-jslaby@suse.cz/
> >
> > I second Jiri here.
> >
> > Saving lines in drivers is not that important compared with all removing 
> > all the variants of the same thing that have crept there over the years.
> >
> > I suspect the main reason for the variants is that everybody just used 
> > other drivers as examples and therefore we've a few "main" variant 
> > branches depending on which of the drivers was used as an example for the 
> > other. That is hardly a good enough reason to keep them different and as 
> > long as each driver keeps its own function for this, it will eventually 
> > lead to similar differentiation so e.g. a one-time band-aid similarization 
> > would not help in the long run.
> >
> > Also, I don't understand why you see it unreadable when the actual code is 
> > out in the open in that macro. It's formatted much better than e.g. 
> > read_poll_timeout() if you want an example of something that is hardly 
> > readable ;-). I agree though there's a learning-curve, albeit small, that 
> > it actually creates a function but that doesn't seem to me as big of an 
> > obstacle you seem to think.
> 
> I think it would help to replace the macro that defines
> the function with a set of macros that can be used in
> function bodies. This would avoid the __VA_ARGS__ stuff
> and allow readers that are unfamiliar with tty drivers to
> treat it as a function call.
> 
> So e.g. instead of 
> 
> static DEFINE_UART_PORT_TX_HELPER_LIMITED(altera_jtaguart_do_tx_chars,
> 		true,
> 		writel(ch, port->membase + ALTERA_JTAGUART_DATA_REG),
> 		({}));
> 
> the altera_jtaguart driver would contain a function like
> 
> static int altera_jtaguart_do_tx_chars(struct uart_port *port,
>                                        unsigned int count)
> {
>        char ch;
> 
>        return uart_port_tx_helper_limited(port, ch, count, true,
>                 writel(ch, port->membase + ALTERA_JTAGUART_DATA_REG),
>                 ({}));
> }
> 
> or some variation of that. It's a few more lines, but those
> extra lines would help me understand what is actually going on
> while still avoiding the usual bugs and duplication.
> 
> If the caller of that function is itself trivial (like
> serial21285_tx_chars), then the intermediate function can
> be omitted in order to save some of the extra complexity.

I'd be ok with that. There's still a small startle factor associated to 
passing that writel(...) as an argument to a "function" but it's the same 
for other things such as read_poll_timeout() so not an end of the world.

-- 
 i.