Re: [PATCH 01/15] drivers: phy: add generic PHY framework

On Mon, Jul 22, 2013 at 12:55:18PM +0530, Kishon Vijay Abraham I wrote:

quoted

	The issue (or one of the issues) in this discussion is that 
	Greg does not like the idea of using names or IDs to associate
	PHYs with controllers, because they are too prone to
	duplications or other errors.  Pointers are more reliable.

	But pointers to what?  Since the only data known to be 
	available to both the PHY driver and controller driver is the
	platform data, the obvious answer is a pointer to platform data
	(either for the PHY or for the controller, or maybe both).

hmm.. it's not going to be simple though as the platform device for the PHY and
controller can be created in entirely different places. e.g., in some cases the
PHY device is a child of some mfd core device (the device will be created in
drivers/mfd) and the controller driver (usually) is created in board file. I
guess then we have to come up with something to share a pointer in two
different files.

What's wrong with using the platform_data structure that is unique to
all boards (see include/platform_data/ for examples)?  Isn't that what
this structure is there for?

greg k-h