Message-Id: <A16B0ABF-AB9D-4F48-88BD-96F123FFEF2F@antoniou-consulting.com>
Date:	Thu, 1 Nov 2012 14:57:26 +0200
From:	Pantelis Antoniou <panto@...oniou-consulting.com>
To:	<balbi@...com>
Cc:	"Cousson, Benoit" <b-cousson@...com>,
	Tony Lindgren <tony@...mide.com>,
	<linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	Koen Kooi <koen@...inion.thruhere.net>,
	Matt Porter <mporter@...com>, Russ Dill <Russ.Dill@...com>,
	<linux-omap@...r.kernel.org>, Kevin Hilman <khilman@...com>,
	Paul Walmsley <paul@...an.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 0/3] capebus moving omap_devices to mach-omap2

Hi,

On Nov 1, 2012, at 2:40 PM, Felipe Balbi wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> On Thu, Nov 01, 2012 at 01:26:10PM +0200, Pantelis Antoniou wrote:
>> Hi 
>> 
>> On Nov 1, 2012, at 1:04 PM, Felipe Balbi wrote:
>> 
>>> Hi,
>>> 
>>> On Thu, Nov 01, 2012 at 12:39:30PM +0200, Pantelis Antoniou wrote:
>>>>>>>               lcd@0 {
>>>>>>>                       compatible = "adafruit,tft-lcd-1.8-red", "sitronix,st7735";
>>>>>>>                       spi-max-frequency = <8000000>;
>>>>>>>                       reg = <0>;
>>>>>>>                       spi-cpol;
>>>>>>>                       spi-cpha;
>>>>>>>                       pinctrl-names = "default";
>>>>>>>                       pinctrl-0 = <&lcd_pins>;
>>>>>>>                       st7735-rst = <&gpio4 19 0>;
>>>>>>>                       st7735-dc = <&gpio4 21 0>;
>>>>>>>               };
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>       };
>>>>>>> };
>>>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> I guess there is no easy solution for that, but it looks to me that
>>>>> what you have to do is to make the DT creation dynamic in your case.
>>>>> Assuming you do not want to do that in the bootloader, you must do
>>>>> that pretty early during the boot process to end up with a full
>>>>> description of your DT tree before creating the devices.
>>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> Do it pretty early in the boot processes ended up with the am335xevm board file in the PSP tree.
>>>> 
>>>> The whole set of possible cape designs cannot be controlled, nor do we want to.
>>>> We want to empower users to come up with their own designs without having to do any kernel/boot loader
>>>> hacking.
>>> 
>>> that's impossible since you will have to provide the capebus driver
>>> anyway.
>>> 
>> 
>> The generic cape bus driver can handle the easy stuff. More complex
>> stuff can be supported with per-cape drivers.
> 
> likewise:
> 
> the generic stuff can be handled by FDT easily, the more complex stuff
> can be supported by dynamically changing FDT blob, no ?
> 

No. You're missing the point. Up until we read the EEPROM we don't know
what to dynamically change in the device tree (not the blob). What you
will end up is something like capebus again. Only you're going to reinvent it
with a different name.

>>>>> Each cape will have their own DTS and based on some board id you
>>>>> will fix the DT dynamically.
>>>>> 
>>>>> My point is that the issue you are facing is a real limitation of
>>>>> DT, so you should fix the DT core and not workaround it by creating
>>>>> artificial bindings / drivers.
>>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> You still haven't described any mechanism to deal with all the use
>>>> cases I described.
>>>> 
>>>> DT can't and will not deal with the complexity that we're facing right
>>>> now.
>>> 
>>> and DT-itself shouldn't. I agree with Benoit that this should be built
>>> at bootloader level, perhaps. Whatever you're doing in capebus, you
>>> could do at kernel space, build your DT bindings in runtime, and pass
>>> that DT blob to kernel.
>> 
>> We're just passing the buck someplace else. We're not fixing the problem.
>> What makes you think that dealing with this in the bootloader is going
>> to be simpler?
> 
> I never said it was supposed to be simpler, it just doesn't sound like
> something the kernel should care about. Kernel cares about the

I just disagree here. The kernel should provide services that make the life
of users easier, not the lives of the kernel developers easier.

> 
>> 
>>> 
>>> One question though, what do you mean by "some capes are full blown
>>> devices with their own drivers" ? Do you mean you have capes running
>>> some other (RT)OS and communicating with linux somehow ? How does it
>>> communicate to the bone ?
>> 
>> Some have FPGAs.
>> https://specialcomp.com/beaglebone/BeagleBone_FPGA.html
> 
> how does linux communicate with those ? What they are matters very
> little ;-) All we need is an interface to load binaries to the FPGA.
> 

We can not know what people will come up with. It might have a few GPIOs
to load the bitfile to the FPGA, but after that, no-one can tell.
I might not interface to Linux at all; it might interface via I2C, or RS232.

Chances are, it won't fit in any kind of known drivers of linux. 
Some guy is using an FPGA for SDR, another is making a radar cape.

These guys don't give a damn frankly about Linux. What they do care about
is having a cheap/easy to develop platform for their own little widget.
If you are going to ask from the to hunt down their own dts and assemble
from various dtsi's they'll just move to something else.

Which is a shame, cause we do have a nice platform here.

>> Some capes have their own MCUs.
>> A recent one has an 6502 communicating with uio_pruss.
>> https://github.com/ohporter/b6502
> 
> that uses remoteproc, so I assume it's using OMAP's mailbox ?
> 
> Again I say that this is not a 'capebus', it's just another device
> which we use another interface to talk to.
> 
> i2c devices will be children of the omap i2c controller, spi devices
> will be children of the omap mcspi, GPMC devices will need the GPMC
> controller and so on, but none of this looks like argument to introduce
> a fake bus into the kernel.
> 

I'll let the users of said bus to do the talking. You're just flat out
wrong IMO.

> -- 
> balbi

Regards

-- Pantelis

--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@...r.kernel.org
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/

Powered by blists - more mailing lists