linux-kernel - Re: [patch/rfc 2.6.25-git] gpio: sysfs interface

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Date:	Tue, 29 Apr 2008 14:47:44 +1000
From:	Ben Nizette <bn@...sdigital.com>
To:	David Brownell <david-b@...bell.net>
Cc:	lkml <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	Trent Piepho <tpiepho@...escale.com>,
	hartleys <hartleys@...ionengravers.com>,
	Mike Frysinger <vapier.adi@...il.com>,
	Bryan Wu <cooloney@...nel.org>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>
Subject: Re: [patch/rfc 2.6.25-git] gpio: sysfs interface


On Mon, 2008-04-28 at 20:44 -0700, David Brownell wrote:
> On Monday 28 April 2008, Ben Nizette wrote:
> >
> > Ah well we're backwards there, though now I think of it I can't think of
> > a great many valid use-cases on my side.  Just for funzies I'll post on
> > the avrfreaks AVR32 support forum and see how many I can actually dig
> > up.
> 
> Use cases would always help clarify things.  I've seen just
> enough to make me understand this is a useful feature, and
> for more reasons than just "feature equality" letting us
> obsolete three drivers/i2c/chips/*.c drivers and help vanish
> half a dozen (at least!) out-of-tree drivers doing that.

Oh yeah, nearly every vendor of small not-a-simple-PC Linux boards would
have their own solution to this problem.  About time they were put to
the knackers.

> 
> The Gumstix user forums and wiki may help too.  ISTR they
> have such a GPIO widget (maybe that's the one I saw which
> supports polling?) and have shipped it for ages ... so they
> will surely have some (PXA-specific) examples lurking.

At a glance there's a bunch of how-to but very little why-to.  Bugger.
In fact their driver looks to be mostly obsoleted by gpio-keys anyway so
not only can't a see a specific use-case of their driver, I can't see
the point of it's existence at all :-/

> 
> 
> > > Trent pointed out that dynamic range assignment can make trouble,
> > > so I can see some help might be needed here.  Were you suggesting
> > > something like a /sys/class/gpio/chips file with contents like
> > > 
> > > 	0-15	gpio
> > > 	16-31	gpio
> > > 	32-47	gpio
> > > 	48-63	gpio
> > > 	192-207	mpuio
> > > 	208-213	tps65010
> > > 
> > > (Matching a stock OMAP 5912 OSK board, for what it's worth.)
> > 
> > Yeah that's the kind of a thing.  Would be well worth having that info
> > especially for dynamically allocated chip bases.
> 
> I'd have no problem with that.  Some people surely would though;
> it has more than one value in that file!  OMG, it's readable! We
> can't have any of that!!  The Earth will turn in its grave!  And
> Slashdot will be decorated in Pink!  Teh End Daze arrive!  :)

xD

Where would the doom mongers prefer it live?  /proc? ;-)

> 
>  
> > > > > The D-space footprint is negligible, except for the sysfs resources
> > > > > associated with each exported GPIO.  The additional I-space footprint
> > > > > is about half of the current size of gpiolib.  No /dev node creation
> > > > > involved, and no "udev" support is needed.
> > > > 
> > > > Which is good for simplicity but makes async notification kinda tricky.
> > > 
> > > Sysfs attributes are supposed to be pollable.  I've not done it,
> > > but fs/sysfs/file.c::sysfs_notify() looks relevant ...
> > 
> > Right, that'll work.
> 
> OK.  In that case, I think I should plan to rename the "direction"
> attribute as "configuration" or something a bit broader ... so that
> writing "irq" (or maybe "rising", "falling", "bothedges", "poll")
> would eventually configure it as an input with an IRQ handler.

Good plan, unless you'd prefer to see "direction" and "interrupt" config
separate.  I have no real preference but IMO
echo "falling" > interrupt
makes more immediate sense than
echo "falling" > configuration

> 
> Whenever someone contributes such an async notification scheme,
> that is.  ;)

;)

--Ben.

> 
> - Dave
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