Re: [PATCH] watchdog: Add hardware dependency to BCM7038 driver

[Jean Delvare <jdelvare@suse.de>]

On Mon, 22 Feb 2016 16:27:52 -0800, Justin Chen wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 4:16 PM, Guenter Roeck <linux@roeck-us.net> wrote:
> > On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 11:16:30AM -0800, Justin Chen wrote:
> >> On Mon, Feb 22, 2016 at 10:43 AM, Jean Delvare <jdelvare@suse.de> wrote:
> >> > Hello Justin,
> >> >
> >> > Le Monday 22 February 2016 à 09:58 -0800, Justin Chen a écrit :
> >> >> This driver is based off of a Broadcom watchdog block, it is not tied
> >> >> to the MIPS core.
> >> >> The watchdog driver is named BCM7038 because that was the first chip
> >> >> that featured this watchdog block. Their are other chips that use this
> >> >> driver that are not MIPS based.
> >> >
> >> > The Kconfig help text doesn't say this at all. With the current wording
> >> > there is no reason why anyone would enable this option if not building a
> >> > kernel for the Broadcom BCM7038.
> >> Sorry about that! I can submit a patch to fix this.
> >> >
> >> > Which other systems reuse this watchdog block exactly? In the kernel
> >> > tree I can't see anyone instantiating this device.
> >> BRCMSTB chips use this block as well as other BCM chips.
> >>
> >> "This driver is for a watchdog block contained in all Broadcom Set-top
> >> Box chips since BCM7038. BCM7038 was made public during the 2004 CES,
> >> and since then, many chips use this watchdog block including some cable
> >> modem chips."
> >
> > That is a bit vague. Can you be more specific ?

Still a lot better than what the Kconfig has at the moment.

> > Also, while the driver may not be limited to MIPS, I am relatively sure
> > that it has some architecture limits. MIPS, ARM, and ARM64, maybe ?
> Yes you are correct, this driver would be limited to Broadcom chips. I
> would suggest "depends on ARCH_BRCMSTB || BMIPS_GENERIC ||
> COMPILE_TEST"

Thanks, I like it. I'll submit a v2 of the patch with this change and a
better description of the option.

-- 
Jean Delvare
SUSE L3 Support