Re: [PATCH v3 0/4] of: teach overlay code to keep /aliases in sync

[Herve Codina <herve.codina@bootlin.com>]

Hi Abdurrahman,

On Tue, 21 Jul 2026 14:36:31 -0700
Abdurrahman Hussain <abdurrahman@nexthop.ai> wrote:

> /aliases entries added by a device-tree overlay are stored in the live
> tree but never enter the global aliases_lookup list that of_alias_scan()
> builds at boot. As a result, of_alias_get_id() returns -ENODEV for
> aliases declared inside overlays, and any driver that relies on
> alias-based numbering (i2c-xiic, spi, tty, mmc, ...) silently loses its
> pinned id and falls back to auto-assignment.
> 
> The gap has been public since 2015 [1] and reproduces trivially: apply
> an overlay that declares e.g. `i2c99 = &foo;`, ask
> of_alias_get_id(foo, "i2c") -> -ENODEV. Bootlin's ELCE 2025 talk on
> PCI DT overlays [2] enumerates "i2c muxes" as one of the subsystems
> broken by dynamic overlays; alias pinning is the underlying cause.

Are you sure aliases were mentioned in the talk and were the cause of issues?

I've got an issue with i2c muxes but it is not related to aliases.

What made you think about aliases issue?

The issue I have is related to fw_devlink consumer/supplier relationship and
I have sent a fix [0] with nothing related to aliases.

[0] https://lore.kernel.org/all/20260630103010.413688-1-herve.codina@bootlin.com/

Best regards,
Hervé