diff mbox

[v5,1/3] gpio: Cygnus: define Broadcom Cygnus GPIO binding

Message ID 1418342706-14755-2-git-send-email-rjui@broadcom.com
State Superseded
Headers show

Commit Message

Ray Jui Dec. 12, 2014, 12:05 a.m. UTC
Document the GPIO device tree binding for Broadcom Cygnus SoC

Signed-off-by: Ray Jui <rjui@broadcom.com>
Reviewed-by: Scott Branden <sbranden@broadcom.com>
---
 .../devicetree/bindings/gpio/brcm,cygnus-gpio.txt  |   87 ++++++++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 87 insertions(+)
 create mode 100644 Documentation/devicetree/bindings/gpio/brcm,cygnus-gpio.txt

Comments

Arnd Bergmann Dec. 12, 2014, 12:08 p.m. UTC | #1
On Thursday 11 December 2014 16:05:04 Ray Jui wrote:
> +
> +- linux,gpio-base:
> +    Base GPIO number of this controller
> +
> 

We've NAK'ed properties like this multiple times before, and it
doesn't get any better this time. What are you trying to achieve
here?

	Arnd
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Alexandre Courbot Dec. 12, 2014, 1:05 p.m. UTC | #2
On Fri, Dec 12, 2014 at 9:08 PM, Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de> wrote:
> On Thursday 11 December 2014 16:05:04 Ray Jui wrote:
>> +
>> +- linux,gpio-base:
>> +    Base GPIO number of this controller
>> +
>>
>
> We've NAK'ed properties like this multiple times before, and it
> doesn't get any better this time. What are you trying to achieve
> here?

I am to blame for suggesting using this property to Ray, and I am
fully aware that this has been rejected before, but look at what
people came with recently to palliate the lack of control over the
GPIO number space for DT platforms:

http://www.spinics.net/lists/arm-kernel/msg384847.html
https://lkml.org/lkml/2014/12/10/133

Right now GPIO numbering for platforms using DT is a very inconsistent
process, subject to change by the simple action of adjusting the value
of ARCH_NR_GPIOS (which we did recently, btw), adding a new GPIO
controller, or changing the probe order of devices. For users of the
integer or sysfs interfaces, this results in GPIO numbers that change,
and drivers and/or user-space programs that behave incorrectly.
Ironically, the only way to have consistent numbers is to use the old
platform files, where you can specify the base number of a gpio_chip.

DT is actually probably not such a bad place to provide consistency in
GPIO numbering. It has a global vision of the system layout, including
all GPIO controllers and the number of GPIOs they include, and thus
can make informed decisions. It provides a consistent result
regardless of probe order. And allowing it to assign GPIO bases to
controllers will free us from the nonsensical dependency of some
arbitrary upper-bound for GPIO numbers that ARCH_NR_GPIOS imposes on
us. Also about ARCH_NR_GPIOS, the plan is to eventually remove it
since we don't need it anymore after the removal of the global
gpio_descs array. This will again interfere with the numbering of GPIO
chips that do not have a base number provided.

Note that I don't really like this, either - but the problem is the
GPIO integer interface. Until everyone has upgraded to gpiod and we
have a replacement for the current sysfs interface (this will take a
while) we have to cope with this. This issue has been bothering users
for years, so this time I'd like to try and solve it the less ugly
way. If there is a better solution, of course I'm all for it.
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Arnd Bergmann Dec. 12, 2014, 3:28 p.m. UTC | #3
On Friday 12 December 2014 22:05:37 Alexandre Courbot wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 12, 2014 at 9:08 PM, Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de> wrote:
> > On Thursday 11 December 2014 16:05:04 Ray Jui wrote:
> >> +
> >> +- linux,gpio-base:
> >> +    Base GPIO number of this controller
> >> +
> >>
> >
> > We've NAK'ed properties like this multiple times before, and it
> > doesn't get any better this time. What are you trying to achieve
> > here?
> 
> I am to blame for suggesting using this property to Ray, and I am
> fully aware that this has been rejected before, but look at what
> people came with recently to palliate the lack of control over the
> GPIO number space for DT platforms:
> 
> http://www.spinics.net/lists/arm-kernel/msg384847.html
> https://lkml.org/lkml/2014/12/10/133
> 
> Right now GPIO numbering for platforms using DT is a very inconsistent
> process, subject to change by the simple action of adjusting the value
> of ARCH_NR_GPIOS (which we did recently, btw), adding a new GPIO
> controller, or changing the probe order of devices. For users of the
> integer or sysfs interfaces, this results in GPIO numbers that change,
> and drivers and/or user-space programs that behave incorrectly.
> Ironically, the only way to have consistent numbers is to use the old
> platform files, where you can specify the base number of a gpio_chip.
> 
> DT is actually probably not such a bad place to provide consistency in
> GPIO numbering. It has a global vision of the system layout, including
> all GPIO controllers and the number of GPIOs they include, and thus
> can make informed decisions. It provides a consistent result
> regardless of probe order. And allowing it to assign GPIO bases to
> controllers will free us from the nonsensical dependency of some
> arbitrary upper-bound for GPIO numbers that ARCH_NR_GPIOS imposes on
> us. Also about ARCH_NR_GPIOS, the plan is to eventually remove it
> since we don't need it anymore after the removal of the global
> gpio_descs array. This will again interfere with the numbering of GPIO
> chips that do not have a base number provided.
> 
> Note that I don't really like this, either - but the problem is the
> GPIO integer interface. Until everyone has upgraded to gpiod and we
> have a replacement for the current sysfs interface (this will take a
> while) we have to cope with this. This issue has been bothering users
> for years, so this time I'd like to try and solve it the less ugly
> way. If there is a better solution, of course I'm all for it.

I think the scheme will fail if you ever get gpio controllers that are
not part of the DT: We have hotpluggable devices (PCI, USB, ...) that
are not represented in DT and that may also provide GPIOs for internal
uses.

The current state of affairs is definitely problematic, but defining
the GPIO numbers in DT properties would only be a relative improvement,
not a solution, and I fear it would make it harder to change the kernel
to remove the gpio numbers eventually.

I wonder if we could instead come up with an approach that completely
randomizes the gpio numbers (as a compile-time option) to find any
places that still rely on specific numbers.

	Arnd
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Ray Jui Dec. 12, 2014, 5:17 p.m. UTC | #4
On 12/12/2014 5:05 AM, Alexandre Courbot wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 12, 2014 at 9:08 PM, Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de> wrote:
>> On Thursday 11 December 2014 16:05:04 Ray Jui wrote:
>>> +
>>> +- linux,gpio-base:
>>> +    Base GPIO number of this controller
>>> +
>>>
>>
>> We've NAK'ed properties like this multiple times before, and it
>> doesn't get any better this time. What are you trying to achieve
>> here?
>
> I am to blame for suggesting using this property to Ray, and I am
> fully aware that this has been rejected before, but look at what
> people came with recently to palliate the lack of control over the
> GPIO number space for DT platforms:
>
> http://www.spinics.net/lists/arm-kernel/msg384847.html
> https://lkml.org/lkml/2014/12/10/133
>
> Right now GPIO numbering for platforms using DT is a very inconsistent
> process, subject to change by the simple action of adjusting the value
> of ARCH_NR_GPIOS (which we did recently, btw), adding a new GPIO
> controller, or changing the probe order of devices. For users of the
> integer or sysfs interfaces, this results in GPIO numbers that change,
> and drivers and/or user-space programs that behave incorrectly.
> Ironically, the only way to have consistent numbers is to use the old
> platform files, where you can specify the base number of a gpio_chip.
>
> DT is actually probably not such a bad place to provide consistency in
> GPIO numbering. It has a global vision of the system layout, including
> all GPIO controllers and the number of GPIOs they include, and thus
> can make informed decisions. It provides a consistent result
> regardless of probe order. And allowing it to assign GPIO bases to
> controllers will free us from the nonsensical dependency of some
> arbitrary upper-bound for GPIO numbers that ARCH_NR_GPIOS imposes on
> us. Also about ARCH_NR_GPIOS, the plan is to eventually remove it
> since we don't need it anymore after the removal of the global
> gpio_descs array. This will again interfere with the numbering of GPIO
> chips that do not have a base number provided.
>
> Note that I don't really like this, either - but the problem is the
> GPIO integer interface. Until everyone has upgraded to gpiod and we
> have a replacement for the current sysfs interface (this will take a
> while) we have to cope with this. This issue has been bothering users
> for years, so this time I'd like to try and solve it the less ugly
> way. If there is a better solution, of course I'm all for it.
>
Agreed.

Since we are just starting to upstream all of our drivers for 
iProc/Cygnus, enforcing all of our new drivers to use the gpiod 
interface is not an issue and is something that should be done.

Our current issue is really on the sysfs interface, as I mentioned 
earlier, a lot of our customers use the sysfs interface for GPIO access. 
Until the sysfs interface issue is resolved, we sort of need a way to 
maintain the GPIO base between different GPIO controllers.
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Ray Jui Dec. 15, 2014, 9:35 p.m. UTC | #5
On 12/12/2014 7:28 AM, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
> On Friday 12 December 2014 22:05:37 Alexandre Courbot wrote:
>> On Fri, Dec 12, 2014 at 9:08 PM, Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de> wrote:
>>> On Thursday 11 December 2014 16:05:04 Ray Jui wrote:
>>>> +
>>>> +- linux,gpio-base:
>>>> +    Base GPIO number of this controller
>>>> +
>>>>
>>>
>>> We've NAK'ed properties like this multiple times before, and it
>>> doesn't get any better this time. What are you trying to achieve
>>> here?
>>
>> I am to blame for suggesting using this property to Ray, and I am
>> fully aware that this has been rejected before, but look at what
>> people came with recently to palliate the lack of control over the
>> GPIO number space for DT platforms:
>>
>> http://www.spinics.net/lists/arm-kernel/msg384847.html
>> https://lkml.org/lkml/2014/12/10/133
>>
>> Right now GPIO numbering for platforms using DT is a very inconsistent
>> process, subject to change by the simple action of adjusting the value
>> of ARCH_NR_GPIOS (which we did recently, btw), adding a new GPIO
>> controller, or changing the probe order of devices. For users of the
>> integer or sysfs interfaces, this results in GPIO numbers that change,
>> and drivers and/or user-space programs that behave incorrectly.
>> Ironically, the only way to have consistent numbers is to use the old
>> platform files, where you can specify the base number of a gpio_chip.
>>
>> DT is actually probably not such a bad place to provide consistency in
>> GPIO numbering. It has a global vision of the system layout, including
>> all GPIO controllers and the number of GPIOs they include, and thus
>> can make informed decisions. It provides a consistent result
>> regardless of probe order. And allowing it to assign GPIO bases to
>> controllers will free us from the nonsensical dependency of some
>> arbitrary upper-bound for GPIO numbers that ARCH_NR_GPIOS imposes on
>> us. Also about ARCH_NR_GPIOS, the plan is to eventually remove it
>> since we don't need it anymore after the removal of the global
>> gpio_descs array. This will again interfere with the numbering of GPIO
>> chips that do not have a base number provided.
>>
>> Note that I don't really like this, either - but the problem is the
>> GPIO integer interface. Until everyone has upgraded to gpiod and we
>> have a replacement for the current sysfs interface (this will take a
>> while) we have to cope with this. This issue has been bothering users
>> for years, so this time I'd like to try and solve it the less ugly
>> way. If there is a better solution, of course I'm all for it.
>
> I think the scheme will fail if you ever get gpio controllers that are
> not part of the DT: We have hotpluggable devices (PCI, USB, ...) that
> are not represented in DT and that may also provide GPIOs for internal
> uses.
>
> The current state of affairs is definitely problematic, but defining
> the GPIO numbers in DT properties would only be a relative improvement,
> not a solution, and I fear it would make it harder to change the kernel
> to remove the gpio numbers eventually.
>
> I wonder if we could instead come up with an approach that completely
> randomizes the gpio numbers (as a compile-time option) to find any
> places that still rely on specific numbers.
>
> 	Arnd
>
Okay, if people think defining the GPIO base number in DT properties as 
a temporary, transient solution is not acceptable, I can switch the 
driver to use dynamic GPIO number allocation (by setting gpio base to a 
negative number and let gpiochip_add find a usable base number).

Like I said previously, dynamic GPIO allocation works fine in the 
kernel, as long as all of our GPIO clients in the kernel use gpiod based 
API, which is what we will enforce going forward. The only problem is 
with some of our customers who use GPIO through sysfs and expect fixed 
global GPIO numbers. Thinking about this more, it's probably not that 
difficult to add a script for those customers to convert/map the GPIO 
numbers based on readings parsed from sysfs, so I guess that's fine.

I'll submit v6 patchset with DT property "linux,gpio-base" removed.
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Arnd Bergmann Dec. 15, 2014, 9:57 p.m. UTC | #6
On Monday 15 December 2014 13:35:47 Ray Jui wrote:
> 
> Like I said previously, dynamic GPIO allocation works fine in the 
> kernel, as long as all of our GPIO clients in the kernel use gpiod based 
> API, which is what we will enforce going forward. The only problem is 
> with some of our customers who use GPIO through sysfs and expect fixed 
> global GPIO numbers. Thinking about this more, it's probably not that 
> difficult to add a script for those customers to convert/map the GPIO 
> numbers based on readings parsed from sysfs, so I guess that's fine.
> 

I think we discussed the user space interface a number of times
in the past, but I forgot the outcome. Either there is already
a way to name gpio lines uniquely in sysfs, or there should be
one.

Can you reach the gpio interfaces using /sys/devices/0001234.bus/1234566.gpiocontroller/...? 

	Arnd
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Ray Jui Dec. 16, 2014, 12:08 a.m. UTC | #7
On 12/15/2014 1:57 PM, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
> On Monday 15 December 2014 13:35:47 Ray Jui wrote:
>>
>> Like I said previously, dynamic GPIO allocation works fine in the
>> kernel, as long as all of our GPIO clients in the kernel use gpiod based
>> API, which is what we will enforce going forward. The only problem is
>> with some of our customers who use GPIO through sysfs and expect fixed
>> global GPIO numbers. Thinking about this more, it's probably not that
>> difficult to add a script for those customers to convert/map the GPIO
>> numbers based on readings parsed from sysfs, so I guess that's fine.
>>
>
> I think we discussed the user space interface a number of times
> in the past, but I forgot the outcome. Either there is already
> a way to name gpio lines uniquely in sysfs, or there should be
> one.
>
> Can you reach the gpio interfaces using /sys/devices/0001234.bus/1234566.gpiocontroller/...?
>
> 	Arnd
>
We use entries under /sys/class/gpio/ to control GPIOs. All base, label, 
and ngpio info specific to a GPIO controller can be found there.
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Alexandre Courbot Dec. 17, 2014, 2:45 a.m. UTC | #8
On Sat, Dec 13, 2014 at 12:28 AM, Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de> wrote:
> On Friday 12 December 2014 22:05:37 Alexandre Courbot wrote:
>> On Fri, Dec 12, 2014 at 9:08 PM, Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de> wrote:
>> > On Thursday 11 December 2014 16:05:04 Ray Jui wrote:
>> >> +
>> >> +- linux,gpio-base:
>> >> +    Base GPIO number of this controller
>> >> +
>> >>
>> >
>> > We've NAK'ed properties like this multiple times before, and it
>> > doesn't get any better this time. What are you trying to achieve
>> > here?
>>
>> I am to blame for suggesting using this property to Ray, and I am
>> fully aware that this has been rejected before, but look at what
>> people came with recently to palliate the lack of control over the
>> GPIO number space for DT platforms:
>>
>> http://www.spinics.net/lists/arm-kernel/msg384847.html
>> https://lkml.org/lkml/2014/12/10/133
>>
>> Right now GPIO numbering for platforms using DT is a very inconsistent
>> process, subject to change by the simple action of adjusting the value
>> of ARCH_NR_GPIOS (which we did recently, btw), adding a new GPIO
>> controller, or changing the probe order of devices. For users of the
>> integer or sysfs interfaces, this results in GPIO numbers that change,
>> and drivers and/or user-space programs that behave incorrectly.
>> Ironically, the only way to have consistent numbers is to use the old
>> platform files, where you can specify the base number of a gpio_chip.
>>
>> DT is actually probably not such a bad place to provide consistency in
>> GPIO numbering. It has a global vision of the system layout, including
>> all GPIO controllers and the number of GPIOs they include, and thus
>> can make informed decisions. It provides a consistent result
>> regardless of probe order. And allowing it to assign GPIO bases to
>> controllers will free us from the nonsensical dependency of some
>> arbitrary upper-bound for GPIO numbers that ARCH_NR_GPIOS imposes on
>> us. Also about ARCH_NR_GPIOS, the plan is to eventually remove it
>> since we don't need it anymore after the removal of the global
>> gpio_descs array. This will again interfere with the numbering of GPIO
>> chips that do not have a base number provided.
>>
>> Note that I don't really like this, either - but the problem is the
>> GPIO integer interface. Until everyone has upgraded to gpiod and we
>> have a replacement for the current sysfs interface (this will take a
>> while) we have to cope with this. This issue has been bothering users
>> for years, so this time I'd like to try and solve it the less ugly
>> way. If there is a better solution, of course I'm all for it.
>
> I think the scheme will fail if you ever get gpio controllers that are
> not part of the DT: We have hotpluggable devices (PCI, USB, ...) that
> are not represented in DT and that may also provide GPIOs for internal
> uses.
>
> The current state of affairs is definitely problematic, but defining
> the GPIO numbers in DT properties would only be a relative improvement,
> not a solution, and I fear it would make it harder to change the kernel
> to remove the gpio numbers eventually.

You are absolutely right that this would be only a partial solution.
However this is a situation where there is no absolute fix (besides
dropping the GPIO numbers completely) and the relief this property
would brings makes it up for its shortcomings IMHO.

> I wonder if we could instead come up with an approach that completely
> randomizes the gpio numbers (as a compile-time option) to find any
> places that still rely on specific numbers.

A.k.a. Linus and Alex' hate mail generator. :P

Actually we are not that far from being able to do completely without
any GPIO number, and maybe that's what we should aim for. I think the
only remaining offender is the sysfs interface. If we could reach GPIO
controllers through a fixed path and just export their GPIOs there, I
believe we would have fixed the whole issue.
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Alexandre Courbot Dec. 17, 2014, 2:52 a.m. UTC | #9
On Tue, Dec 16, 2014 at 6:57 AM, Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de> wrote:
> On Monday 15 December 2014 13:35:47 Ray Jui wrote:
>>
>> Like I said previously, dynamic GPIO allocation works fine in the
>> kernel, as long as all of our GPIO clients in the kernel use gpiod based
>> API, which is what we will enforce going forward. The only problem is
>> with some of our customers who use GPIO through sysfs and expect fixed
>> global GPIO numbers. Thinking about this more, it's probably not that
>> difficult to add a script for those customers to convert/map the GPIO
>> numbers based on readings parsed from sysfs, so I guess that's fine.
>>
>
> I think we discussed the user space interface a number of times
> in the past, but I forgot the outcome. Either there is already
> a way to name gpio lines uniquely in sysfs, or there should be
> one.
>
> Can you reach the gpio interfaces using /sys/devices/0001234.bus/1234566.gpiocontroller/...?

No, but it seems like this is exactly the solution we need. We could
have an "export" node there that takes a relative GPIO number and
exports it under
/sys/devices/0001234.bus/1234566.gpiocontroller/exported/ the same way
the current sysfs exporter does. Then for convenience we could also
allow exported GPIOs to take names to be used under the shorter
/sys/class/gpio/ (named GPIOs is another request we pushed back many
times but that keeps coming).

Let's see if I can come with a patch. That would at least give us
something to reply to the many people that hit this issue.
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Arnd Bergmann Dec. 17, 2014, 10:26 a.m. UTC | #10
On Wednesday 17 December 2014 11:45:01 Alexandre Courbot wrote:
> 
> Actually we are not that far from being able to do completely without
> any GPIO number, and maybe that's what we should aim for. I think the
> only remaining offender is the sysfs interface. If we could reach GPIO
> controllers through a fixed path and just export their GPIOs there, I
> believe we would have fixed the whole issue.

What about the hundreds of board files and device drivers that still
reference hardcoded gpio numbers? The problem seems mostly solved for
anything that uses DT, but there are some architectures and a number
of ARM platforms that don't use DT and probably never will.

I would assume they could all be changed to use gpiod_lookup tables,
but that's a lot of work.

	Arnd
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Russell King - ARM Linux Dec. 17, 2014, 10:44 a.m. UTC | #11
On Wed, Dec 17, 2014 at 11:45:01AM +0900, Alexandre Courbot wrote:
> Actually we are not that far from being able to do completely without
> any GPIO number, and maybe that's what we should aim for. I think the
> only remaining offender is the sysfs interface.

And that is a user API, and there's lots of users of it (eg, on Raspberry
Pi platforms.)  So changing it isn't going to be easy - I'd say that it's
impractical.

What you're suggesting would be like re-numbering Linux syscalls.
Alexandre Courbot Dec. 17, 2014, 1:13 p.m. UTC | #12
On Wed, Dec 17, 2014 at 7:44 PM, Russell King - ARM Linux
<linux@arm.linux.org.uk> wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 17, 2014 at 11:45:01AM +0900, Alexandre Courbot wrote:
>> Actually we are not that far from being able to do completely without
>> any GPIO number, and maybe that's what we should aim for. I think the
>> only remaining offender is the sysfs interface.
>
> And that is a user API, and there's lots of users of it (eg, on Raspberry
> Pi platforms.)  So changing it isn't going to be easy - I'd say that it's
> impractical.
>
> What you're suggesting would be like re-numbering Linux syscalls.

Uh, I expressed myself poorly. What I intended to say is that once we
have a sysfs alternative that does not rely on GPIO numbers (and thus
have the same feature coverage as the integer interface), we can
require new platforms to exclusively rely on gpiod/sysfs2, and
encourage older users to switch to it if they have an issue with the
way integers are handled or need one of the new features.

I don't foresee that we will ever be able to retire the integer
interface, however I would like to be able to say "your problem will
be solved if you switch to gpiod" instead of having to juggle with
potentially conflicting integer range requirements from different
platforms. Right now the only thing that prevents us to say that is
the lack of a consistent sysfs interface.
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Alexandre Courbot Dec. 17, 2014, 1:16 p.m. UTC | #13
On Wed, Dec 17, 2014 at 7:26 PM, Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de> wrote:
> On Wednesday 17 December 2014 11:45:01 Alexandre Courbot wrote:
>>
>> Actually we are not that far from being able to do completely without
>> any GPIO number, and maybe that's what we should aim for. I think the
>> only remaining offender is the sysfs interface. If we could reach GPIO
>> controllers through a fixed path and just export their GPIOs there, I
>> believe we would have fixed the whole issue.
>
> What about the hundreds of board files and device drivers that still
> reference hardcoded gpio numbers? The problem seems mostly solved for
> anything that uses DT, but there are some architectures and a number
> of ARM platforms that don't use DT and probably never will.
>
> I would assume they could all be changed to use gpiod_lookup tables,
> but that's a lot of work.

Indeed, that's not something to expect, as I replied to Russell. Sorry
about the confusion.
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Linus Walleij Jan. 13, 2015, 8:01 a.m. UTC | #14
On Mon, Dec 15, 2014 at 10:57 PM, Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de> wrote:
> On Monday 15 December 2014 13:35:47 Ray Jui wrote:
>>
>> Like I said previously, dynamic GPIO allocation works fine in the
>> kernel, as long as all of our GPIO clients in the kernel use gpiod based
>> API, which is what we will enforce going forward. The only problem is
>> with some of our customers who use GPIO through sysfs and expect fixed
>> global GPIO numbers. Thinking about this more, it's probably not that
>> difficult to add a script for those customers to convert/map the GPIO
>> numbers based on readings parsed from sysfs, so I guess that's fine.
>>
>
> I think we discussed the user space interface a number of times
> in the past, but I forgot the outcome. Either there is already
> a way to name gpio lines uniquely in sysfs, or there should be
> one.

There is one. The struct gpio_chip contains a .names field with
strings giving names to the GPIOs on the chip.

This field does not have standardized DT bindings or anything
but should be used.

Overall the sysfs interface is an abomination for relying on
the notoriously unstable GPIO numberspace and other things.
It was merged when the subsystem lacked a maintainer.

Yours,
Linus Walleij
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Linus Walleij Jan. 13, 2015, 8:06 a.m. UTC | #15
On Wed, Dec 17, 2014 at 11:44 AM, Russell King - ARM Linux
<linux@arm.linux.org.uk> wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 17, 2014 at 11:45:01AM +0900, Alexandre Courbot wrote:
>> Actually we are not that far from being able to do completely without
>> any GPIO number, and maybe that's what we should aim for. I think the
>> only remaining offender is the sysfs interface.
>
> And that is a user API, and there's lots of users of it (eg, on Raspberry
> Pi platforms.)  So changing it isn't going to be easy - I'd say that it's
> impractical.
>
> What you're suggesting would be like re-numbering Linux syscalls.

The problem is that right now if we set the .base of a gpio_chip
to -1 for dynamic allocation of GPIO numbers and we have more
than one GPIO chip in the system, the numbers basically depend
on probe order, and may theoretically even differ between two boots.

So in these cases preserving the ABI means preserving the
unpredictability of these assigned numbers or something.

For the old usecases with a single GPIO controller and a fixed
base offset of e.g. 0 (which I suspect was implicit in the initial
design of the subsystem) things work fine as always, it's these new
dynamic use cases that destabilize the ABI.

Yours,
Linus Walleij
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Russell King - ARM Linux Jan. 13, 2015, 11:41 a.m. UTC | #16
On Tue, Jan 13, 2015 at 09:06:15AM +0100, Linus Walleij wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 17, 2014 at 11:44 AM, Russell King - ARM Linux
> <linux@arm.linux.org.uk> wrote:
> > On Wed, Dec 17, 2014 at 11:45:01AM +0900, Alexandre Courbot wrote:
> >> Actually we are not that far from being able to do completely without
> >> any GPIO number, and maybe that's what we should aim for. I think the
> >> only remaining offender is the sysfs interface.
> >
> > And that is a user API, and there's lots of users of it (eg, on Raspberry
> > Pi platforms.)  So changing it isn't going to be easy - I'd say that it's
> > impractical.
> >
> > What you're suggesting would be like re-numbering Linux syscalls.
> 
> The problem is that right now if we set the .base of a gpio_chip
> to -1 for dynamic allocation of GPIO numbers and we have more
> than one GPIO chip in the system, the numbers basically depend
> on probe order, and may theoretically even differ between two boots.
> 
> So in these cases preserving the ABI means preserving the
> unpredictability of these assigned numbers or something.
> 
> For the old usecases with a single GPIO controller and a fixed
> base offset of e.g. 0 (which I suspect was implicit in the initial
> design of the subsystem) things work fine as always, it's these new
> dynamic use cases that destabilize the ABI.

Since GPIOs are exported through sysfs into userland by GPIO number,
and we know that there are users of it (see
https://github.com/pilight/wiringX) which hard encode GPIO numbers,
so this is *really* something that we as kernel developers can't
change without breaking such users.

So, what I'm saying is be very careful about moving to a fully
dynamic space: you could end up breaking userspace if you do.
Linus Walleij Jan. 16, 2015, 10:18 a.m. UTC | #17
On Tue, Jan 13, 2015 at 12:41 PM, Russell King - ARM Linux
<linux@arm.linux.org.uk> wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 13, 2015 at 09:06:15AM +0100, Linus Walleij wrote:
>> On Wed, Dec 17, 2014 at 11:44 AM, Russell King - ARM Linux
>> <linux@arm.linux.org.uk> wrote:
>> > On Wed, Dec 17, 2014 at 11:45:01AM +0900, Alexandre Courbot wrote:
>> >> Actually we are not that far from being able to do completely without
>> >> any GPIO number, and maybe that's what we should aim for. I think the
>> >> only remaining offender is the sysfs interface.
>> >
>> > And that is a user API, and there's lots of users of it (eg, on Raspberry
>> > Pi platforms.)  So changing it isn't going to be easy - I'd say that it's
>> > impractical.
>> >
>> > What you're suggesting would be like re-numbering Linux syscalls.
>>
>> The problem is that right now if we set the .base of a gpio_chip
>> to -1 for dynamic allocation of GPIO numbers and we have more
>> than one GPIO chip in the system, the numbers basically depend
>> on probe order, and may theoretically even differ between two boots.
>>
>> So in these cases preserving the ABI means preserving the
>> unpredictability of these assigned numbers or something.
>>
>> For the old usecases with a single GPIO controller and a fixed
>> base offset of e.g. 0 (which I suspect was implicit in the initial
>> design of the subsystem) things work fine as always, it's these new
>> dynamic use cases that destabilize the ABI.
>
> Since GPIOs are exported through sysfs into userland by GPIO number,
> and we know that there are users of it (see
> https://github.com/pilight/wiringX) which hard encode GPIO numbers,
> so this is *really* something that we as kernel developers can't
> change without breaking such users.

I agree.

In some other thread I came up with the idea that if
we add enumerated aliases for the GPIO controllers in the
device tree (so that each can be assigned a sequence number,
like we do on the PL011 ttys) we can assign them numbers
starting from 0.

The only reason that dynamic GPIO start from some random
high offset is that the on-chip GPIOs are assumed to be present
at offset 0+, so this is done so that the dynamic controllers
avoid colliding with them. (At least that is how I understand it.)
So on a fully DT-enabled system assigning numbers starting
from 0 should be kind of default.

Yours,
Linus Walleij
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diff mbox

Patch

diff --git a/Documentation/devicetree/bindings/gpio/brcm,cygnus-gpio.txt b/Documentation/devicetree/bindings/gpio/brcm,cygnus-gpio.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0e446d4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/devicetree/bindings/gpio/brcm,cygnus-gpio.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,87 @@ 
+Broadcom Cygnus GPIO Controller
+
+Required properties:
+
+- compatible:
+    Must be "brcm,cygnus-gpio"
+
+- reg:
+    Define the base and range of the I/O address space that contain the Cygnus
+GPIO controller registers
+
+- ngpios:
+    Total number of GPIOs the controller provides
+
+- linux,gpio-base:
+    Base GPIO number of this controller
+
+- #gpio-cells:
+    Must be two. The first cell is the GPIO pin number (within the
+controller's domain) and the second cell is used for the following:
+    bit[0]: polarity (0 for normal and 1 for inverted)
+    bit[18:16]: internal pull up/down: 0 - pull up/down disabled
+                                       1 - pull up enabled
+                                       2 - pull down enabled
+    bit[22:20]: drive strength: 0 - 2 mA
+                                1 - 4 mA
+                                2 - 6 mA
+                                3 - 8 mA
+                                4 - 10 mA
+                                5 - 12 mA
+                                6 - 14 mA
+                                7 - 16 mA
+
+- gpio-controller:
+    Specifies that the node is a GPIO controller
+
+Optional properties:
+
+- interrupt-controller:
+    Specifies that the node is an interrupt controller. Not all Cygnus GPIO
+interfaces support interrupt, e.g., the CRMU GPIO controller does not have its
+interrupt routed to the main processor's GIC
+
+- interrupts:
+    The interrupt outputs from the GPIO controller.
+
+- no-drv-strength:
+    Specifies the GPIO controller does not support drive strength configuration
+
+Example:
+	gpio_asiu: gpio@180a5000 {
+		compatible = "brcm,cygnus-gpio";
+		reg = <0x180a5000 0x668>;
+		ngpios = <122>;
+		linux,gpio-base = <0>;
+		#gpio-cells = <2>;
+		gpio-controller;
+		interrupt-controller;
+		interrupts = <GIC_SPI 174 IRQ_TYPE_LEVEL_HIGH>;
+	};
+
+	gpio_crmu: gpio@03024800 {
+		compatible = "brcm,cygnus-gpio";
+		reg = <0x03024800 0x50>;
+		ngpios = <6>;
+		linux,gpio-base = <146>;
+		#gpio-cells = <2>;
+		gpio-controller;
+		no-drv-strength;
+	};
+
+	/*
+	 * Touchscreen that uses the ASIU GPIO 100, with internal pull-up
+	 * enabled
+	 */
+	tsc {
+		...
+		...
+		gpio-event = <&gpio_asiu 100 0x10000>;
+	};
+
+	/* Bluetooth that uses the CRMU GPIO 2, with polarity inverted */
+	bluetooth {
+		...
+		...
+		bcm,rfkill-bank-sel = <&gpio_crmu 2 1>
+	}