Re: [PATCH v13 02/10] dt-bindings: document devicetree bindings for mux-controllers and gpio-mux

[Philipp Zabel <p.zabel@pengutronix.de>]

On Wed, 2017-04-19 at 13:23 +0200, Peter Rosin wrote:
> On 2017-04-19 13:05, Philipp Zabel wrote:
> > On Wed, 2017-04-19 at 12:41 +0200, Peter Rosin wrote:
> >> On 2017-04-19 11:17, Philipp Zabel wrote:
> >>> On Tue, 2017-04-18 at 15:36 +0200, Peter Rosin wrote:
> >>>> If I got things wrong when I skimmed whatever I came across, and if the
> >>>> mmio register is the only mux control option in the stars, it becomes
> >>>> less obvious... It's of course still possible to hook into the mux
> >>>> subsystem, but the benefit is questionable. And you do get the extra
> >>>> device tree node. You could of course also implement a mux driver
> >>>> outside of drivers/mux and thus make use of the mux api, but it's tiny
> >>>> and any benefit is truly small.
> >>>
> >>> What I wondered mostly is whether it would be a good idea to move the
> >>> OF-graph ports into the mux controller node, and let the video capture
> >>> device be the consumer of the mux.
> >>> But this wouldn't fit well with the clear split between the mux
> >>> controller and the actual mux hardware in the mux DT bindings.
> >>
> >> I have tried to do something similar. I think. The current
> >> drivers/i2c/muxes/i2c-mux-gpio.c is a good candidate for the same thing
> >> IIUC.
> >>
> >> That dedicated driver and the general purpose i2c mux driver does pretty
> >> much the same thing with these two DT snippets:
> >>
> >> Dedicated i2c-mux-gpio DT snippet:
> >>
> >> 	i2c-mux {
> >> 		compatible = "i2c-mux-gpio";
> >> 		i2c-parent = <&i2c1>;
> >>
> >> 		mux-gpios = <&gpio1 22 0 &gpio1 23 0>;
> >>
> >> 		#address-cells = <1>;
> >> 		#size-cells = <0>;
> >>
> >> 		i2c@1 {
> >> 			...
> >> 		};
> >>
> >> 		i2c@3 {
> >> 			...
> >> 		};
> >> 	};
> >>
> >> General purpose mux DT snippet:
> >>
> >> 	mux: mux-controller {
> >> 		compatible = "gpio-mux";
> >> 		#mux-control-cells = <0>;
> >>
> >> 		mux-gpios = <&gpio1 22 0 &gpio1 23 0>;
> >> 	};
> >>
> >> 	i2c-mux {
> >> 		compatible = "i2c-mux";
> >> 		i2c-parent = <&i2c1>;
> >>
> >> 		mux-controls = <&mux>;
> >>
> >> 		#address-cells = <1>;
> >> 		#size-cells = <0>;
> >>
> >> 		i2c@1 {
> >> 			...
> >> 		};
> >>
> >> 		i2c@3 {
> >> 			...
> >> 		};
> >> 	};
> > 
> > Yes, replace i2c-mux with video-mux and the i2c@x nodes with port@x
> > nodes, and this is very close to what I am thinking about.
> > 
> >> I would love to find a way to cleanly get the mux framework to handle
> >> the first DT as well, and thus being able to obsolete the dedicated
> >> i2c-mux-gpio driver. I have not figured out how to accomplish that
> >> without abusing the driver-model to a point that it's not working.
> >> Help with that task is dearly appreciated.
> >>
> >> What I have stumbled on, I think, is that two drivers needs to be
> >> instantiated from the same DT node. At the same time, I need the
> >> mux framework to handle the current out-of-node thing with a
> >> phandle as well, so that several mux consumers can share a common
> >> mux controller. My understanding of these matters are apparently not
> >> deep enough...
> > 
> > Not necessarily, if the framework could export a function to create a
> > gpio/mmio mux_chip on a given device and the gpio-mux and *-mux-gpio
> > drivers just reuse that.
> 
> I've been up that creek. Why should the gpio mux be special cased?

You are right, this does not scale.

> That's not clean, the implication is that all mux consumers need
> to handle the gpio case and have a special compatible for that
> case etc. Then someone thinks the DT should look equally "clean" for
> some i2c based mux, and the weeds start piling up. This is exactly
> what we don't want. We want the mux consumer drivers to be totally
> agnostic about the fact that they happen to use a gpio mux.

If you want to have i2c-mux-gpio and i2c-mux compatibles, and a single
driver to handle them both, it must at least match both compatibles, so
it can't be completely agnostic.

Why not then have it call

	if (/* compatible == "i2c-mux" */)
		mux = devm_mux_control_get(dev, NULL);
	else /* if (compatible == "i2c-mux-gpio/mmio/etc.") */
		mux = devm_mux_control_create(dev);

? The mux framework core could hold a list of those <usage>-mux-<type>
compatibles and dispatch creation of the correct mux (or mux platform
device, if necessary).

regards
Philipp