On Tue, 10 Nov 2020 08:26:58 +0100
Mauro Carvalho Chehab [off-list ref] wrote:

Hi Jonathan,

Em Sun, 8 Nov 2020 16:56:21 +0000
Jonathan Cameron [off-list ref] escreveu:

quoted

quoted

PS.: the IIO subsystem is the one that currently has more duplicated
ABI entries:  
$ ./scripts/get_abi.pl validate 2>&1|grep iio
Warning: /sys/bus/iio/devices/iio:deviceX/in_accel_x_calibbias is defined 2 times:  Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-iio-icm42600:0  Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-iio:394
Warning: /sys/bus/iio/devices/iio:deviceX/in_accel_y_calibbias is defined 2 times:  Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-iio-icm42600:1  Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-iio:395
Warning: /sys/bus/iio/devices/iio:deviceX/in_accel_z_calibbias is defined 2 times:  Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-iio-icm42600:2  Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-iio:396
Warning: /sys/bus/iio/devices/iio:deviceX/in_anglvel_x_calibbias is defined 2 times:  Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-iio-icm42600:3  Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-iio:397
Warning: /sys/bus/iio/devices/iio:deviceX/in_anglvel_y_calibbias is defined 2 times:  Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-iio-icm42600:4  Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-iio:398
Warning: /sys/bus/iio/devices/iio:deviceX/in_anglvel_z_calibbias is defined 2 times:  Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-iio-icm42600:5  Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-iio:399
Warning: /sys/bus/iio/devices/iio:deviceX/in_count0_preset is defined 2 times:  Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-iio-timer-stm32:100  Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-iio-lptimer-stm32:0
Warning: /sys/bus/iio/devices/iio:deviceX/in_count0_quadrature_mode is defined 2 times:  Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-iio-timer-stm32:117  Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-iio-lptimer-stm32:14
Warning: /sys/bus/iio/devices/iio:deviceX/in_count_quadrature_mode_available is defined 3 times:  Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-iio-counter-104-quad-8:2  Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-iio-timer-stm32:111  Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-iio-lptimer-stm32:8
Warning: /sys/bus/iio/devices/iio:deviceX/out_altvoltageY_frequency is defined 2 times:  Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-iio-frequency-adf4371:0  Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-iio:599
Warning: /sys/bus/iio/devices/iio:deviceX/out_altvoltageY_powerdown is defined 2 times:  Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-iio-frequency-adf4371:36  Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-iio:588
Warning: /sys/bus/iio/devices/iio:deviceX/out_currentY_raw is defined 2 times:  Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-iio-light-lm3533-als:43  Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-iio-health-afe440x:38
Warning: /sys/bus/iio/devices/iio:deviceX/out_current_heater_raw is defined 2 times:  Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-iio-humidity-hdc2010:0  Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-iio-humidity-hdc100x:0
Warning: /sys/bus/iio/devices/iio:deviceX/out_current_heater_raw_available is defined 2 times:  Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-iio-humidity-hdc2010:1  Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-iio-humidity-hdc100x:1
Warning: /sys/bus/iio/devices/iio:deviceX/sensor_sensitivity is defined 2 times:  Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-iio-distance-srf08:0  Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-iio-proximity-as3935:8
Warning: /sys/bus/iio/devices/triggerX/sampling_frequency is defined 2 times:  Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-iio-timer-stm32:92  Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-iio:45    

quoted

That was intentional.  Often these provide more information on the
ABI for a particular device than is present in the base ABI doc.  

FYI, right now, there are 20 duplicated entries, being 16 of them
from IIO, on those files:

	$ ./scripts/get_abi.pl validate 2>&1|perl -ne 'if (m,(Documentation/\S+)\:,g) { print "$1\n" }'|sort|uniq
	Documentation/ABI/stable/sysfs-driver-w1_ds28e04
	Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-iio-counter-104-quad-8
	Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-iio-distance-srf08
	Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-iio-frequency-adf4371
	Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-iio-humidity-hdc2010
	Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-iio-icm42600
	Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-iio-light-lm3533-als
	Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-iio-timer-stm32
	Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-class-backlight-adp8860
	Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-class-led-trigger-pattern
	Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-kernel-iommu_groups

quoted

A bit like when we have additional description for dt binding properties
for a particular device, even though they are standard properties.

Often a standard property allows for more values than the specific
one for a particular device.  There can also be obscuring coupling
between sysfs attributes due to hardware restrictions that we would
like to provide some explanatory info on.

I suppose we could add all this information to the parent doc but
that is pretty ugly and will make that doc very nasty to read.  

I understand what you meant to do, but right now, it is is actually
a lot uglier than merging into a single entry ;-)

Let's view ABI from the PoV of a system admin that doesn't know
yet about a certain ABI symbol.

I'd be surprised if a sys admin is looking at these at all. They
tend to be used only by userspace software writers.  But I guess the
point stands.

He'll try to seek for the symbol, more likely using the HTML 
documentation. Only very senior system admins might try to take
a look at the Kernel.

Sad truth here is that before these were in the html docs, they'd
have grepped and the right option would fairly obvious as it
would be the more specific file.  Ah well, sometimes progress bites :)

This is what happens when one would seek for a duplicated symbol
via command line:

	$ ./scripts/get_abi.pl search /sys/bus/iio/devices/iio:deviceX/out_altvoltageY_frequency$
	
	/sys/bus/iio/devices/iio:deviceX/out_altvoltageY_frequency
	----------------------------------------------------------
	
	Kernel version:		3.4.0
	Contact:		linux-iio@vger.kernel.org
	Defined on file(s):	Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-iio-frequency-adf4371 Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-bus-iio
	
	Description:
	
	Stores the PLL frequency in Hz for channel Y.
	Reading returns the actual frequency in Hz.
	The ADF4371 has an integrated VCO with fundamendal output
	frequency ranging from 4000000000 Hz 8000000000 Hz.
	
	out_altvoltage0_frequency:
	        A divide by 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 or circuit generates
	        frequencies from 62500000 Hz to 8000000000 Hz.
	out_altvoltage1_frequency:
	        This channel duplicates the channel 0 frequency
	out_altvoltage2_frequency:
	        A frequency doubler generates frequencies from
	        8000000000 Hz to 16000000000 Hz.
	out_altvoltage3_frequency:
	        A frequency quadrupler generates frequencies from
	        16000000000 Hz to 32000000000 Hz.
	
	Note: writes to one of the channels will affect the frequency of
	all the other channels, since it involves changing the VCO
	fundamental output frequency.
	
	Output frequency for channel Y in Hz. The number must always be
	specified and unique if the output corresponds to a single
	channel.

As the "What:" field is identical on both sysfs-bus-iio-frequency-adf4371
and sysfs-bus-iio, those entries are merged, which produces an ABI
documentation mixing both the generic one and the board specific one
into a single output.

Worse than that, the "generic" content is at the end.

The same happens when generating the HTML output.

See, entries at the HTML output are ordered by the What: field,
which is considered within the script as an unique key, as it is
unique (except for IIO and a couple of other cases).

-

As I commented on an e-mail I sent to Greg, I see a few ways
to solve it.

The most trivial one (which I used to solve a few conflicts on
other places), is to place driver-specific details on a separate
file under Documentation/driver-api, and mention it at the
generic entries. The docs building system will generate cross
references for Documentation/.../foo.rst files, so, everything
should be OK.

Hmm. That might work out OK.  These devices tend to be weird enough
that they probably could do with some additional explanation anyway. 

The second alternative that I also used on a couple of places
is to modify the generic entry for it to contain the generic
definition first, followed by per-device details.

I'll do an audit of what we actually have here. Perhaps we end
up with a mixture of these two options.

Might take a little while though.

There is a third possible alternative: add a new optional field
(something like Scope:) which would be part of the unique key,
if present. Implementing support for it could be tricky, as the
produced output would likely need to create cross-references
between the generic field (if present) and the per-device details.

That would be lovely but probably not worth the effort for something
that occurs so rarely currently.

Jonathan

Thanks,
Mauro

PS.: I'm taking a few days of PTO during this week. So, it
could take a while for me to reply again to this thread.