Re: Try to address the drm_debugfs issues

[Stanislaw Gruszka <stanislaw.gruszka@linux.intel.com>]

On Thu, Feb 09, 2023 at 09:18:35AM +0100, Christian König wrote:
> Hello everyone,
> 
> the drm_debugfs has a couple of well known design problems.
> 
> Especially it wasn't possible to add files between initializing and registering
> of DRM devices since the underlying debugfs directory wasn't created yet.
> 
> The resulting necessity of the driver->debugfs_init() callback function is a
> mid-layering which is really frowned on since it creates a horrible
> driver->DRM->driver design layering.
> 
> The recent patch "drm/debugfs: create device-centered debugfs functions" tried
> to address those problem, but doesn't seem to work correctly. This looks like
> a misunderstanding of the call flow around drm_debugfs_init(), which is called
> multiple times, once for the primary and once for the render node.
> 
> So what happens now is the following:
> 
> 1. drm_dev_init() initially allocates the drm_minor objects.
> 2. ... back to the driver ...
> 3. drm_dev_register() is called.
> 
> 4. drm_debugfs_init() is called for the primary node.
> 5. drm_framebuffer_debugfs_init(), drm_client_debugfs_init() and
>    drm_atomic_debugfs_init() call drm_debugfs_add_file(s)() to add the files
>    for the primary node.
> 6. The driver->debugfs_init() callback is called to add debugfs files for the
>    primary node.
> 7. The added files are consumed and added to the primary node debugfs directory.
> 
> 8. drm_debugfs_init() is called for the render node.
> 9. drm_framebuffer_debugfs_init(), drm_client_debugfs_init() and
>    drm_atomic_debugfs_init() call drm_debugfs_add_file(s)() to add the files
>    again for the render node.
> 10. The driver->debugfs_init() callback is called to add debugfs files for the
>     render node.
> 11. The added files are consumed and added to the render node debugfs directory.
> 
> 12. Some more files are added through drm_debugfs_add_file().
> 13. drm_debugfs_late_register() add the files once more to the primary node
>     debugfs directory.
> 14. From this point on files added through drm_debugfs_add_file() are simply ignored.
> 15. ... back to the driver ...
> 
> Because of this the dev->debugfs_mutex lock is also completely pointless since
> any concurrent use of the interface would just randomly either add the files to
> the primary or render node or just not at all.
> 
> Even worse is that this implementation nails the coffin for removing the
> driver->debugfs_init() mid-layering because otherwise drivers can't control
> where their debugfs (primary/render node) are actually added.
> 
> This patch set here now tries to clean this up a bit, but most likely isn't
> fully complete either since I didn't audit every driver/call path.
> 
> Please comment/discuss.

What is end goal here regarding debugfs in DRM ? My undersigning is that
the direction is get rid of debugfs_init callback as described in:
https://cgit.freedesktop.org/drm/drm-misc/tree/Documentation/gpu/todo.rst#n511
and also make it driver/device-centric instead of minor-centric as
described here:
https://cgit.freedesktop.org/drm/drm-misc/commit/?id=99845faae7099cd704ebf67514c1157c26960a	

I'm asking from accel point of view. We can make things there as they
should look like at the end for DRM, since currently no drivers have
established their interfaces and they can be changed.

Is drivers/device-centric mean we should use drm_dev->unique for debugfs 
dir entry name instead of minor ?
Or perhaps we should have 2 separate dir entries: one (old dri/minor/)
for device drm debugfs files and other one for driver specific files ?

Also what regarding sysfs ? Should we do something with accel_sysfs_device_minor ?

Regards
Stanislaw