[PATCH v4 1/2] software node: return -ENOTCONN when referenced swnode is not registered yet

Bartosz Golaszewski
2026-04-07T13:28:15Z

It's possible that at the time of resolving a reference to a remote
software node, the node we know exists is not yet registered as a full
firmware node. We currently return -ENOENT in this case but the same
error code is also returned in some other cases, like the reference
property with given name not existing in the property list of the local
software node.

It makes sense to let users know that we're dealing with an unregistered
software node so that they can defer probe - the situation is somewhat
similar to there existing a firmware node to which no device is bound
yet - which is valid grounds for probe deferral. To that end: use
-ENOTCONN to indicate the software node is "not connected".

Acked-by: Andy Shevchenko <andy@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Bartosz Golaszewski <bartosz.golaszewski@oss.qualcomm.com>
---
drivers/base/property.c | 2 ++
drivers/base/swnode.c | 2 +-
2 files changed, 3 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/drivers/base/property.c b/drivers/base/property.c
index 8d9a34be57fbf185e639c70cc4baae4510ba70ee..51394b7d44e31d0453e9c0084bb7ddb25b14a429 100644
--- a/drivers/base/property.c
+++ b/drivers/base/property.c
@@ -594,6 +594,8 @@ EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL(fwnode_property_match_property_string);
* %-ENOENT when the index is out of bounds, the index has an empty
* reference or the property was not found
* %-EINVAL on parse error
+ * %-ENOTCONN when the remote firmware node is a software node that
+ * has not been registered as a firmware node yet
*/
int fwnode_property_get_reference_args(const struct fwnode_handle *fwnode,
const char *prop, const char *nargs_prop,
diff --git a/drivers/base/swnode.c b/drivers/base/swnode.c
index 51320837f3a9f1bf4f65aa161d9b941affc74936..61e73417aee89feb855b0f429e112ca0af78a003 100644
--- a/drivers/base/swnode.c
+++ b/drivers/base/swnode.c
@@ -554,7 +554,7 @@ software_node_get_reference_args(const struct fwnode_handle *fwnode,
return -EINVAL;

if (!refnode)
- return -ENOENT;
+ return -ENOTCONN;

if (nargs_prop) {
error = fwnode_property_read_u32(refnode, nargs_prop, &nargs_prop_val);

--
2.47.3