Re: [PATCH 1/6] gpiolib: Allow GPIO chips to request their own GPIOs

[Mika Westerberg <mika.westerberg@linux.intel.com>]

On Wed, Mar 05, 2014 at 10:49:41AM +0800, Linus Walleij wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 25, 2014 at 12:00 AM, Mika Westerberg
> <mika.westerberg@linux.intel.com> wrote:
> 
> > Sometimes it is useful to allow GPIO chips themselves to request GPIOs they
> > own through gpiolib API. One usecase is ACPI ASL code that should be able
> > to toggle GPIOs through GPIO operation regions.
> >
> > We can't really use gpio_request() and its counterparts because it will pin
> > the module to the kernel forever (as it calls module_get()). Instead we
> > provide a gpiolib internal functions gpiochip_request/free_own_desc() that
> > work the same as gpio_request() but don't manipulate module refrence count.
> >
> > Since it's the GPIO chip driver who requests the GPIOs in the first place
> > we can be sure that it cannot be unloaded without the driver knowing about
> > that. Furthermore we only limit this functionality to be available only
> > inside gpiolib.
> >
> > Signed-off-by: Mika Westerberg <mika.westerberg@linux.intel.com>
> 
> I fully trust you in doing the ACPI stuff in patches 2-n but on this patch
> in particular I want Alexandre's review tag as well, as he's working
> actively with the descriptor API and I don't want to add too many quirks
> without his consent.

Thanks for your trust :)

> So Alexandre, what do you say about this?

I'm about to send v2 of the series with Rafael's comments taken into
account. However, I stumbled to another locking problem:

I'm going to move taking the gpio_lock outside of __gpiod_request() and
have __gpiod_request() to release that lock, so that we can call
chip->request() safely.

Since we are using _irqsave()/_irqrestore() versions, it means that I need
to pass flags as a pointer from gpiod_request() to __gpiod_request() like:

	spin_lock_irqsave(&gpio_lock, flags);
	if (try_module_get(chip->owner)) {
		ret = __gpiod_request(desc, label, &flags);
		...

Is that acceptable or can you guys suggest some alternative? One
alternative that I can think about is to have __gpiod_request() to take the
lock and move try_module_get() outside to gpiod_request():

__gpiod_request()
{
	unsigned long flags;

	spin_lock_irqsave(&gpio_lock, flags);
	...
}

gpiod_request():
{
	...
	if (try_module_get(chip->owner)) {
		ret = __gpiod_request(desc, label);
		...
}

Thoughts?