On Thu, Sep 2, 2021 at 10:41 AM Andrew Lunn [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

  How would this be avoided? Or are you thinking of some kind of two-level
  component driver system:
  - the DSA switch is a component master, with components being its
    sub-devices such as internal PHYs etc
  - the DSA switch is also a component of the DSA switch tree

I think you might be missing a level. Think about the automotive
reference design system you posted the DT for a couple of days
ago. Don't you have cascaded switches, which are not members of the
same DSA tree. You might need a component for that whole group of
switches, above what you suggest here.

Can you nest components? How deep can you nest them?

As far as I know you can nest components.

Also, technically you can make your own lightweight component model
like behaviour using stateful device links or fwnode links (probably
just a simple for loop). Just create a new "dsa_switch_tree" device
and create device links between that and whatever other devices that
need to probe first. And then you'll just have a common
"dsa_switch_tree" driver that probes these types of devices.

I'm waiting for [1] to land before I jump in and clean up the
component model to be more flexible and cleaner by using device links.
The current implementation does a lot of stuff that device links will
take care of for free.

[1] - https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CAGETcx-mRrqC_sGiBk+wx8RtwjJjXf0KJo+ejU6SweEBiATaLw@mail.gmail.com/ (local)

-Saravana