Re: [PATCH v3 1/4] ACPI: Support system notify handler via .sys_notify

[Toshi Kani <toshi.kani@hp.com>]

> > > > > By using acpi_install_notify_handler(), each driver needs to walk
> > > > > through the entire ACPI namespace to find its associated ACPI devices
> > > > > and call it to register one by one.  I think this is more work for
> > > > > non-ACPI drivers than defining acpi_driver.
> > > > 
> > > > I'm not really sure what you mean.  The drivers in question already know
> > > > what the relevant ACPI device nodes are (because they need them anyway
> > > > for other purposes), so they don't need to look for them specifically and
> > > > acpi_install_notify_handler() doesn't do any namespace walking.  So what
> > > > you said above simply doesn't make sense from this viewpoint.
> > > 
> > > Yes, if drivers already know the relevant ACPI devices, then walking the
> > > ACPI namespace is not necessary.  I was referring the case like
> > > processor_driver.c, acpi_memhotplug.c, and container.c in my statement. 
> > 
> > BTW, when an ACPI device is marked as non-present, which is the case
> > before hot-add, we do not create an acpi_device object and therefore do
> > not bind it with a driver.  This is why these drivers walk the ACPI
> > namespace and install their notify handlers regardless of device status.
> 
> So maybe we should create struct acpi_device objects in that case too?

I think it has some challenge as well.  We bind an ACPI driver with
device_register(), which calls device_add()-> kobject_add().  So, all
non-present ACPI device objects will show up in sysfs, unless we can
change the core.  This will change user interface.  There can be quite
many non-present devices in ACPI namespace depending on FW
implementation.

Thanks,
-Toshi