[RFC PATCH 01/10] net: stmmac: move XPCS lifetime management to platform drivers

[Maxime Chevallier]

Hi,

+Christian

On 7/14/26 21:08, Coia Prant wrote:
> The current XPCS creation logic in stmmac_pcs_setup() is problematic
> for several reasons.
> 
> First, if a device tree specifies a "pcs-handle" but no select_pcs()
> callback is provided by the platform driver, the created XPCS is never
> used. The phylink framework requires select_pcs() to actually return
> the PCS to the core, so the pcs-handle property becomes effectively
> useless without the matching callback. This is confusing for developers
> who expect that specifying a pcs-handle in their device tree should be
> sufficient to enable the PCS.

I think Christian's work on fwnode PCS would help a lot with that PCS
handling in stmmac:

https://lore.kernel.org/netdev/20260618125752.1223-1-ansuelsmth@gmail.com/

I don't know when Christian plans to iterate, it could be worth using
that new fwnode mechanism here ?

Maxime