[PATCH RFC 1/2] dt-bindings: pinctrl: Add pinctrl-packed

[Linus Walleij]

Hi Billy,

thanks for your patch!

This approach is better than trying to extend pinctrl-single in my
opinion, but it has a bit of road to cover.

On Fri, Feb 13, 2026 at 9:18 AM Billy Tsai <billy_tsai at aspeedtech.com> wrote:

> Add a Devicetree binding for a generic pin controller where pinmux and/or
> pin configuration are represented as fixed-width fields packed
> sequentially within shared registers.
>
> The binding targets controllers that are typically exposed as subnodes of
> a syscon node and accessed via regmap-mmio through the parent.
>
> Signed-off-by: Billy Tsai <billy_tsai at aspeedtech.com>
(...)
> +properties:
> +  compatible:
> +    oneOf:
> +      - enum:
> +          - pinctrl-packed
> +          - pinconf-packed

Why do you need two? Can't you just use one, pinctrl-packed.

> +  pinctrl-packed,function-mask:
> +    description: Mask of the allowed register bits for a single pin.
> +    $ref: /schemas/types.yaml#/definitions/uint32

To me this could be static data in the driver but I guess the whole
point is to do what pinctrl-single is doing and store all of this
information in the device tree, because reasons.

I guess the DT binding maintainers need to decide on this and
also what to name it.

> +  pinctrl-packed,gpio-range:
> +    description: Optional list of pin base, nr pins & gpio function.
> +    $ref: /schemas/types.yaml#/definitions/phandle-array
> +    items:
> +      items:
> +        - description: phandle of a gpio-range node
> +        - description: pin base
> +        - description: number of pins
> +        - description: gpio function

Just use the standard gpio-range.

> +patternProperties:
> +  '-pins(-[0-9]+)?$|-pin$':
> +    type: object
> +    additionalProperties: false
> +    properties:
> +      pinctrl-packed,pins:
> +        description: Array of pin index and function selector pairs.
> +        $ref: /schemas/types.yaml#/definitions/uint32-array

Just use pinmux = <...>; from pinmux-node.yaml
(make sure to use the ref include.)

> +      pinctrl-packed,bias-pullup:
> +      pinctrl-packed,bias-pulldown:
> +      pinctrl-packed,drive-strength:
> +      pinctrl-packed,input-schmitt:
> +      pinctrl-packed,input-schmitt-enable:
> +      pinctrl-packed,low-power-mode:
> +      pinctrl-packed,slew-rate:

Just use the existing configs from
pincfg-node.yaml and abstain from any new
inventions here.

Yours,
Linus Walleij