Re: [PATCH v3 0/2] Add capability to append to property

[Ayush Singh <ayush@beagleboard.org>]

On 16/12/24 11:39, David Gibson wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 10, 2024 at 04:34:17PM +0100, Andreas Gnau wrote:
>> On 2024-11-11 10:54, Ayush Singh wrote:
>>> Allow appending values to a property instead of overriding the previous
>>> values of property.
>>>
>>> Currently, we have /delete-node/ and /delete-property/, but lack
>>> /append-property/. Hence we end up having to repeat all existing values
>>> when appending to a property (e.g. see [1] appending to clocks from
>>> [2]).
>>>
>>> This functionality is also important for creating a device tree based
>>> implementation to support different types of addon-boards such as
>>> mikroBUS, Grove [3], etc.
>>>
>>> In practice, it looks as follows:
>>>
>>> ```
>>> dts-v1/;
>>>
>>> / {
>>> 	str-prop = "0";
>>> };
>>>
>>> / {
>>> 	/append-property/ str-prop = "1";
>>> };
>>> ```
>> If we add /append-property/, why not add /prepend-property/ as well? This is
>> not only "nice for consistency", but it would also enable solving a problem
>> where SoC compatible strings from dtsi [1] need to be repeated in board dts
>> [2], because one cannot prepend to an existing property.
>>
>> ```
>> dts-v1/;
>> / {
>> 	compatible = "soc-vendor,soc1234";
>> };
>>
>> / {
>> 	/prepend-property/ compatible = "board-vendor,board-xyz";
>> };
>> ```
>>
>> What do you think?
> So, this kind of demonstrates why I don't love /append-property/ as a
> proposed syntax.  The way I'd prefer to do this, ideally, is to allow
> properties to be described as expressions.  We already have integer
> expressions that can be used in < > context, but I had intended to
> extent to string and bytestring expressions - but I've never had the
> time to implement that.
>
> Under that proposal, I'd expect appending to look something like:
> 	str-prop = /previous-value/, "1";
>
> Prepending,
> 	str-prop = "1", /previous-value/;
>
> .. and you could do both at once in the obvious way.
>
> The downside, of course, is that this is a much more complicated
> proposal to implement.  Parsing that syntax isn't too hard, but I
> think doing it sensibly will need some structural changes in order to
> evaluate property values as expressions, rather than simply
> constructing the properties directly left to right.  In particular the
> interactions between expression syntax and within-property labels (and
> other markers) could be fiddly to get right.
>

Do you wish to allow `/previous-value/` to be repeated in the same 
property? Something like this:

     str-prop = "1", /previous-value/, "2", /previous-value/, "3";


Ayush Singh