Re: [PATCH v10 3/4] dtc: Plugin and fixup support

[Phil Elwell <phil-FnsA7b+Nu9XbIbC87yuRow@public.gmane.org>]

On 29/11/2016 12:24, Pantelis Antoniou wrote:
> First note is that this is exactly what the portable connector is supposed to
> do; abstract away the SoC differences.
>
> Second note is that it’s not the overlay application that’s having problems, it’s
> your parameter patching method.
>
> The 'spimaxfrequency = <&can0>,"spi-max-frequency:0”’ form could more easily be
> done by targeting aliases instead of node labels.
>
> I.e. You can apply the overlay, set an alias to the node and instead of referencing
> the label, reference the alias.
But the patching is done before the overlays are applied, in isolation
from the base tree, so that they can still be used with the kernel
configfs overlay mechanism. How do aliases (which associated symbols
with absolute paths) help?

> Again, this is a stop-gap until the portable connector is done, but what I take out
> of this is the need for a parameterization step in which an overlay is modified before
> it is applied according to an external parameter.
Yes, absolutely.

Phil