From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Message-ID: <49025DE0.6070403@firmworks.com> Date: Fri, 24 Oct 2008 13:44:32 -1000 From: Mitch Bradley MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Matt Sealey Subject: Re: GPIO - marking individual pins (not) available in device tree References: <4900ED81.3040202@genesi-usa.com> <4900F90B.80703@firmworks.com> <4901032F.3090805@genesi-usa.com> <49011C42.2020101@firmworks.com> <49024646.3050300@genesi-usa.com> In-Reply-To: <49024646.3050300@genesi-usa.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Cc: linuxppc-dev list , devicetree-discuss list List-Id: Linux on PowerPC Developers Mail List List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , > Right. I had a similar discussion about this the other day with Anton (I > think he forwarded it here but I wasn't subscribed at that point..). The > current ideology for device trees is to get rid of device_type for new > trees that aren't OF-based. I think it's relevant to give nodes fancy > names (i.e. not "timer" or even "ethernet") since the name property is > entirely descriptive in nature. I also think it's relevant that > device_type > still exists because since the name is totally irrelevant except from a > user-friendliness point of view, marking a device as a generic type is > quite important (device_type = serial, ethernet, rtc, keyboard) where > compatible properties are usually wildly over-specific. I don't use device_type much, if at all, anymore. Generic name + compatible just works better than device_type + specific name. When I write code that has to find a node that is suitable for a given purpose, I look for the existence of suitable methods and perhaps other properties. I was just too hard to keep the list of device_type values properly synchronized with all the possible things that you might want to infer from that set of names. device_type is one of those things that seemed like a good idea at the time, but didn't work out as well as I had hoped.