Re: [PATCH] gpio: Allow user to customise maximum number of GPIOs

Arnd Bergmann
2022-08-18T12:46:46Z

On Thu, Aug 18, 2022 at 2:25 PM Linus Walleij <linus.walleij@linaro.org> wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 18, 2022 at 1:33 PM Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de> wrote:
> > On Thu, Aug 18, 2022 at 1:13 PM Linus Walleij <linus.walleij@linaro.org> wrote:
> > > I think there may be systems and users that still depend on GPIO base
> > > numbers being assigned from ARCH_NR_GPIOS and
> > > downwards (userspace GPIO numbers in sysfs will also change...)
> > > otherwise we could assign from 0 and up.
> >
> > Is it possible to find in-kernel users that depend on well-known
> > numbers for dynamically assigned gpios? I would argue
> > that those are always broken.
>
> Most in-kernel users hard-code the base to something like
> 0 etc it's only the ones that code -1 into .base that are in
> trouble because that will activate dynamic assignment for the
> base.
>
> git grep 'base = -1' yields these suspects:
>
> arch/arm/common/sa1111.c: sachip->gc.base = -1;
> arch/arm/common/scoop.c: devptr->gpio.base = -1;
> arch/powerpc/platforms/52xx/mpc52xx_gpt.c: gpt->gc.base = -1;
> arch/powerpc/platforms/83xx/mcu_mpc8349emitx.c: gc->base = -1;
>
> That's all! We could just calculate these to 512-ngpios and
> hardcode that instead.

How do the consumers find the numbers for these four?

> > > Right now the safest would be:
> > > Assign from 512 and downwards until we hit 0 then assign
> > > from something high, like U32_MAX and downward.
> > >
> > > That requires dropping gpio_is_valid() everywhere.
> > >
> > > If we wanna be bold, just delete gpio_is_valid() and assign
> > > bases from 0 and see what happens. But I think that will
> > > lead to regressions.
> >
> > I'm still unsure how removing gpio_is_valid() would help.
>
> If we allow GPIO base all the way to U32_MAX
> this function becomes:
>
> static inline bool gpio_is_valid(int number)
> {
> return number >= 0 && number < U32_MAX;
> }
>
> and we can then just
>
> #define gpio_is_valid true
>
> and in that case it is better to delete the use of this function
> altogether since it can not fail.

S32_MAX might be a better upper bound. That allows to
just have no number assigned to a gpio chip. Any driver
code calling desc_to_gpio() could then get back -1
or a negative error code.

Making the ones that are invalid today valid sounds like
a step backwards to me if the goal is to stop using
gpio numbers and most consumers no longer need them.

Arnd