Thread (33 messages) 33 messages, 5 authors, 2015-01-20

Re: [PATCH v2 1/5] irqchip: add dumb demultiplexer implementation

From: Rob Herring <hidden>
Date: 2015-01-15 15:41:19
Also in: linux-arm-kernel, lkml

On Thu, Jan 15, 2015 at 3:11 AM, Thomas Gleixner [off-list ref] wrote:
On Wed, 14 Jan 2015, Rob Herring wrote:
quoted
On Wed, Jan 14, 2015 at 4:36 AM, Thomas Gleixner [off-list ref] wrote:
quoted
All attempts to work around that have resulted in horrible bandaids so
far. That's why I guided Boris to implement this dummy demultiplexing
mechanism. It solves the problem at hand nicely without adding nasty
hackarounds into the suspend/resume code and inflicting platform
knowledge on multi-platform device drivers.
This change will break on old kernels with a new dtb. Would you be
happy if a BIOS update required a new kernel? Fixing this for any
platform requires a dtb update which may not be possible on some
platforms. I don't have a problem with this breakage for 1 platform
and the at91 guys may not care, but we'd ultimately be changing how
all shared irqs are specified for all DT. Maybe we decide that this is
how we want to describe things, but that needs much wider discussion
and agreement.
We do not change shared interrupts in any way. We provide an
alternative mechanism for braindead hardware. And if the at91 folks
are fine with the DT change, then it's their decision. Nothing forces
this on everyone.
We are changing how shared interrupts are described in DT. We don't
need 2 ways to describe them. We could say this is only for AT91 and
continue to describe shared interrupts as has been done forever. Then
the next platform that hits this problem will have to go thru the same
ABI breakage. Or we change DT practices to describe all shared
interrupts with a demux node. Given the way DTs are incrementally
created, it is not something we can check with review or tools, so we
will still have the same ABI breakage problem.
quoted
quoted
If you have a proper solution for the problem at hand which

   - avoids the demux dummy

   - works straight forward with suspend/resume/wakeup

   - does not add horrible new APIs

   - does not add conditionals to the interrupt hotpath

   - does not inflict platform knowledge about interrupt chip details
     on drivers

then I'm happy to take it.

But as long as you can't come up with anything sane, the demux dummy
is the best solution for this problem we've seen so far.
What if during suspend you move all actions w/o IRQF_NO_SUSPEND to a
suspended action list? This would leave only the actions with
IRQF_NO_SUSPEND set in the active action list. The cost would be a
pointer in irq_desc and moving the actions during suspend and resume.
That's exactly what we want NOT. Because it prevents us to do proper
sanity checks for IRQF_NO_SUSPEND. We've been there and I rejected it
for that very reason.
quoted
There are probably ways to do this demux irqchip without a DT change.
What's the problem with a DT change for a single platform, if the
maintainers are willing to take it and deal with the fallout?
What's the solution for a platform that an ABI break is not okay and
can't deal with the fallout?
And in case of AT91 the new kernel will simply work with the old DT
and just emit the same warning vs. the IRQF_NO_SUSPEND mismatch. Older
kernels won't work with a new DT, but that's about it.

Aside of that, I'm quite amused about your DT update worries. DTs
break with every kernel version on very popular platforms in very
weird and subtle ways.
Someone has to. It is a problem that we need to get better at
preventing. It's an ABI. I don't think I need to explain what that
means.

Certainly there are folks who would just prefer DT to be a kernel data
structure so we don't have to worry about this ABI nonsense.

Rob
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