Re: [RFC, PATCH] watchdog on gpio

[Haavard Skinnemoen <hskinnemoen@atmel.com>]

On Mon, 14 Jan 2008 07:22:39 -0500
"Mike Frysinger" <vapier.adi@gmail.com> wrote:

> > There is: platform_driver_probe(). It takes the probe function as a
> > parameter so that it can be left out of the platform_driver struct.
> > After it returns, there are no references to the probe function left
> > around, so if you call platform_driver_probe() instead of
> > platform_driver_register(), the probe function can be __init.  
> 
> ah, thanks for that.  i think in that case, there's no way to bind the
> release function to the process ?  which means the driver is no longer
> unloadable ?  which means the platform driver release function can be
> scrubbed as well as the module exit function as well as changing the
> Kconfig to be a bool ?

No, you can still provide a remove() callback, but it can usually be
__exit_p since it will only be needed if you compile the driver as a
module.

The platform_driver will be registered just as before; the only
difference is that it won't have a probe() callback so dynamically
added devices can't be bound to the driver. If the driver has a
remove() callback, it will be called when the driver is unregistered,
but that will usually only happen if the driver is compiled as a
module (and has a module exit function.)

Haavard