Date:   Thu, 14 Oct 2021 16:52:01 +0900
From:   Hector Martin <marcan@...can.st>
To:     Krzysztof Kozlowski <krzysztof.kozlowski@...onical.com>,
        linux-arm-kernel@...ts.infradead.org
Cc:     Alyssa Rosenzweig <alyssa@...enzweig.io>,
        Sven Peter <sven@...npeter.dev>, Marc Zyngier <maz@...nel.org>,
        Mark Kettenis <mark.kettenis@...all.nl>,
        Michael Turquette <mturquette@...libre.com>,
        Stephen Boyd <sboyd@...nel.org>,
        Rob Herring <robh+dt@...nel.org>,
        Viresh Kumar <vireshk@...nel.org>, Nishanth Menon <nm@...com>,
        Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@....com>,
        "Rafael J. Wysocki" <rafael@...nel.org>,
        Kevin Hilman <khilman@...nel.org>,
        Ulf Hansson <ulf.hansson@...aro.org>,
        linux-clk@...r.kernel.org, devicetree@...r.kernel.org,
        linux-pm@...r.kernel.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH 6/9] memory: apple: Add apple-mcc driver to manage MCC
 perf in Apple SoCs

On 14/10/2021 16.36, Krzysztof Kozlowski wrote:
> On 14/10/2021 08:59, Hector Martin wrote:
>>> Don't you have a limit of supported channels? It cannot be any uint32...
>>
>> Today, it's max 8. But if come Monday we find out Apple's new chips have
>> 16 channels and otherwise the same register layout, I'd much rather not
>> have to change the driver...
> 
> OK, however if the driver ever receives different DT with a different
> value, it will accept it unconditionally and go via address space. I am
> just saying that being conservative on received values is safer, but I
> am fine with skipping this problem. At the end we trust DT that it will
> always match the kernel, don't we? Oh wait, someone can use DT from
> other kernel in this one...

DTs using these compatibles should have the same register layout, and 
should work with this driver; if a new chip comes out that has a 
different register layout we will change the compatibles (both) and 
therefore older kernels won't bind at all. If it has the same layout 
we'll keep the base compatible, `reg` will grow as needed to accomodate 
the extra channels, and e.g. num-channels=16 will then just work on 
older kernels with no changes.

Obviously a broken DT with an insane value here would crash the driver, 
but so would any other number of crazy DT things; however, I don't 
expect that to ever happen.

There's also the case where we end up with multiple memory controllers 
at discrete offsets (e.g. rumored multi-die configurations); in that 
case we'll end up with multiple genpd parents and have to add code to 
support that, and in the meantime older kernels will just have broken 
cpufreq on the p-cores. But I think that is ~acceptable as long as the 
system boots; we don't expect to be able to *fully* support newer SoCs 
on older kernels with no code changes. What I'm aiming for is just 
making the system work, hopefully with NVMe and USB and a dumb 
framebuffer, so that distro installers can run and then users can later 
install a proper up to date kernel will full support for the new SoC.

>> Ah, I didn't realize that was a valid option for MODULE_LICENSE. I guess
>> anything containing "GPL" works with EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL?
> 
> I don't think exporting symbols is related to how you license your code.

It is; only modules with a GPL-compatible MODULE_LICENSE get to use 
symbols exported via EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL.

See kernel/module.c for the symbol lookup logic and 
include/linux/license.h for the logic to check the string (seems like 
"Dual MIT/GPL" is explicitly whitelisted there).

Of course, this is a futile effort, as ~every time I see a proprietary 
module in some embedded device, it either falsely declares itself to be 
GPL, or they have a shim module that re-exports GPL symbols as non-GPL.

-- 
Hector Martin (marcan@...can.st)
Public Key: https://mrcn.st/pub

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