Re: [RFC RESEND] GPIO: gpio-generic: Add DT support
From: Stephen Warren <hidden>
Date: 2013-07-30 17:59:05
On 07/30/2013 10:22 AM, Olof Johansson wrote:
On Tue, Jul 30, 2013 at 03:18:35PM +0400, Alexander Shiyan wrote:quoted
This patch adds DT support for generic (MMIO) GPIO driver.
quoted
diff --git a/Documentation/devicetree/bindings/gpio/gpio-generic.txt b/Documentation/devicetree/bindings/gpio/gpio-generic.txt
quoted
+Generic memory-mapped GPIO controller + +Required properties: +- compatible: Should be "basic-mmio-gpio" or "basic-mmio-gpio-be".
I think naming this "simple-gpio" would match other simple/basic/generic bindings better.
quoted
+- reg: Physical base GPIO controller registers location and length. +- reg-names: Should be the names of reg resources. Each register uses + its own reg name, so there should be as many reg names as referenced + registers: + "dat" : Input/output register (Required), + "set" : Register for set output bits (Optional), + "clr" : Register for clear output bits (Optional), + "dirout" : Register for setup direction as output (Optional), + "dirin" : Register for setup direction as input (Optional). +- gpio-controller: Marks the device node as a gpio controller. +- #gpio-cells: Should be two.
...
I'm trying to figure out what to say about this binding. It's not really describing hardware, instead it's strongly tied to how the basic-mmio-gpio driver expects the platform data to look.
I'm not sure; the binding seems to only contain a direct representation of pure HW properties; the addresses/offsets of various registers in the HW block.
It makes more sense to actually describe the hardware in question, and then have the driver handle that as expected. I.e. either have a small conversion layer that binds to the actual hardware compatible value and registers a basic-mmio-gpio device from there, or extend the basic-mmio-gpio driver to do it by itself.
Ah, I guess the question more: Do we want generic bindings that describe the low-level details of the HW in a completely generic fashion so that new HW can be supported with zero kernel changes, or do we want a simple driver with a lookup table that maps from compatible value to the HW configuration? One of the potential benefits of DT is to be able to support new HW without code changes, although perhaps that's more typically considered in the context of new boards rather than new IP blocks or SoCs. If we reject this driver, we surely have to get rid of pinctrl-single, and perhaps some others?