[PATCH v2] docs: dt-bindings: add DTS Coding Style document

[Krzysztof Kozlowski]

On 22/11/2023 09:57, Michal Simek wrote:
> Hi Geert,
> 
> On 11/22/23 09:53, Geert Uytterhoeven wrote:
>> Hi Michal,
>>
>> On Wed, Nov 22, 2023 at 9:50 AM Michal Simek <michal.simek at amd.com> wrote:
>>> On 11/22/23 09:29, Dragan Simic wrote:
>>>> On 2023-11-22 09:21, Krzysztof Kozlowski wrote:
>>>>> On 22/11/2023 09:09, Chen-Yu Tsai wrote:
>>>>>> On Wed, Nov 22, 2023 at 4:05 PM Krzysztof Kozlowski
>>>>>> <krzysztof.kozlowski at linaro.org> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On 21/11/2023 14:50, Rafał Miłecki wrote:
>>>>>>>>> +Order of Properties in Device Node
>>>>>>>>> +----------------------------------
>>>>>>>>> +
>>>>>>>>> +Following order of properties in device nodes is preferred:
>>>>>>>>> +
>>>>>>>>> +1. compatible
>>>>>>>>> +2. reg
>>>>>>>>> +3. ranges
>>>>>>>>> +4. Standard/common properties (defined by common bindings, e.g. without
>>>>>>>>> +   vendor-prefixes)
>>>>>>>>> +5. Vendor-specific properties
>>>>>>>>> +6. status (if applicable)
>>>>>>>>> +7. Child nodes, where each node is preceded with a blank line
>>>>>>>>> +
>>>>>>>>> +The "status" property is by default "okay", thus it can be omitted.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> I think it would really help to include position of #address-cells and
>>>>>>>> #size-cells here. In some files I saw them above "compatible" that seems
>>>>>>>> unintuitive. Some prefer putting them at end which I think makes sense
>>>>>>>> as they affect children nodes.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Whatever you choose it'd be just nice to have things consistent.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> This is a standard/common property, thus it goes to (4) above.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> It's probably a mix, but AFAIK a lot of the device trees in tree have
>>>>>> #*-cells after "status". In some cases they are added in the board
>>>>>> .dts files, not the chip/module .dtsi files.
>>>>>
>>>>> Existing DTS is not a good example :)
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> +1 that it makes sense at the end as they affect child nodes.
>>>>>
>>>>> I still insist that status must be the last, because:
>>>>> 1. Many SoC nodes have address/size cells but do not have any children
>>>>> (I2C, SPI), so we put useless information at the end.
>>>>> 2. Status should be the final information to say whether the node is
>>>>> ready or is not. I read the node, check properties and then look at the end:
>>>>> a. Lack of status means it is ready.
>>>>> b. status=disabled means device still needs board resources/customization
>>>>
>>>> I agree with the "status" belonging to the very end, because it's both logical
>>>> and much more readable.  Also, "status" is expected to be modified in the
>>>> dependent DT files, which makes it kind of volatile and even more deserving to
>>>> be placed last.
>>>
>>> I am just curious if having status property at the end won't affect
>>> execution/boot up time. Not sure how it is done in Linux but in U-Boot at least
>>> (we want to have DTs in sync between Linux and U-Boot) of_find_property is
>>> pretty much big loop over all properties. And status property defined at the end
>>> means going over all of them to find it out to if device is present.
>>> Not sure if Linux works in the same way but at least of_get_property is done in
>>> the same way.
>>
>> As the default is "okay", you have to loop over all properties anyway.
> 
> No doubt if you don't define status property that you need to loop over all of 
> them. We normally describe the whole SOC with pretty much all IPs status = 
> disabled and then in board file we are changing it to okay based on what it is 
> actually wired out.
> It means on our systems all nodes have status properties. If you have it at 
> first you don't need to go over all.

We never sacrificed code readability in favor of code execution speed,
so neither should we do it here.

If the speed is a problem, project can still add a flag to dtc to
re-shuffle properties in FDT depending on its needs.

Best regards,
Krzysztof