Re: [RFC PATCH v2 0/4] Input: mpr121-polled: Add polled driver for MPR121

[Dmitry Torokhov <dmitry.torokhov@gmail.com>]

Hi Michal,

On Fri, May 17, 2019 at 03:12:49PM +0200, Michal Vokáč wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I have to deal with a situation where we have a custom i.MX6 based
> platform in production that uses the MPR121 touchkey controller.
> Unfortunately the chip is connected using only the I2C interface.
> The interrupt line is not used. Back in 2015 (Linux v3.14), my
> colleague modded the existing mpr121_touchkey.c driver to use polling
> instead of interrupt.
> 
> For quite some time yet I am in a process of updating the product from
> the ancient Freescale v3.14 kernel to the latest mainline and pushing
> any needed changes upstream. The DT files for our imx6dl-yapp4 platform
> already made it into v5.1-rc.
> 
> I rebased and updated our mpr121 patch to the latest mainline.
> It is created as a separate driver, similarly to gpio_keys_polled.
> 
> The I2C device is quite susceptible to ESD. An ESD test quite often
> causes reset of the chip or some register randomly changes its value.
> The [PATCH 3/4] adds a write-through register cache. With the cache
> this state can be detected and the device can be re-initialied.
> 
> The main question is: Is there any chance that such a polled driver
> could be accepted? Is it correct to implement it as a separate driver
> or should it be done as an option in the existing driver? I can not
> really imagine how I would do that though..
> 
> There are also certain worries that the MPR121 chip may no longer be
> available in nonspecifically distant future. In case of EOL I will need
> to add a polled driver for an other touchkey chip. May it be already
> in mainline or a completely new one.

I think that my addition of input_polled_dev was ultimately a wrong
thing to do. I am looking into enabling polling mode for regular input
devices as we then can enable polling mode in existing drivers.

As far as gpio-keys vs gpio-key-polled, I feel that the capabilities of
polling driver is sufficiently different from interrupt-driven one, so
we will likely keep them separate.

Thanks.

-- 
Dmitry