linux-kernel - Re: GPIO: Fix probe() error return in gpio driver probes

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Date:	Thu, 18 Dec 2008 10:16:27 -0800
From:	David Brownell <david-b@...bell.net>
To:	Jean Delvare <khali@...ux-fr.org>, Ben Dooks <ben-linux@...ff.org>
Cc:	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, linux-i2c@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: GPIO: Fix probe() error return in gpio driver probes

On Monday 15 December 2008, Jean Delvare wrote:
> 
> > > > I was thinking that -EINVAL is almost the least informative
> > > > diagnostic code possible, since so many places return it
> > > > that it's usually hard to find out *which* invalid parameter
> > > > triggered ...
> > > > 
> > > > Is there a less-overloaded code you could return?
> > > 
> > > -EINVAL sounds right to me, all that's really missing is dev_dbg()
> > > messages in the drivers to log what the exact problem was. 

Fair enough, though it just papers over how ambiguous -EINVAL is.


> > It might be more acceptable to be dev_err(), that way it will get
> > printed no matter what debug options have been selected. If so, a
> > seperate patch is probably in order to make the change.
> 
> As far as I can see, such errors would be caused by development-time
> mistakes, so dev_dbg() seems appropriate. dev_err() would make the
> binaries larger for all end-users.

Right, dev_dbg() is the way to go.  I'd ack a version of this patch
which pairs these -EINVAL changes with dev_dbg() messages to make
these problems less painful to track down.  dev_err() is much abused.

- Dave

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