From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Mark Brown Subject: Re: [RFC] [PATCH] Device Tree on ARM platform Date: Wed, 27 May 2009 17:32:24 +0100 Message-ID: <20090527163223.GE1970@sirena.org.uk> References: <1243408083.13460.14.camel@debian-nb> <20090527150527.GK6805@pengutronix.de> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Return-path: Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20090527150527.GK6805@pengutronix.de> Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org To: Robert Schwebel Cc: Timur Tabi , Janboe Ye , Grant Likely , devicetree-discuss , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-arm-kernel@lists.arm.linux.org.uk, rmk@arm.linux.org.uk List-Id: devicetree@vger.kernel.org On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 05:05:27PM +0200, Robert Schwebel wrote: > I'm highly convinced that the existence of oftree-hell in ARM-land would > have been *the* key motivation for FSL to have worked on mainline > instead of inhouse-BSPs back in 2004 when we mainlined i.MX1 and in 2007 > when we started the mainline work on MX27 and MX31. I remain to be convinced about that but anyway.. > Seriously: oftree in general is a good idea. Just that it doesn't work > in practise. The concept has some serious flaws: > - Platform data makes it possible to store function pointers. There > is no equivalent to this concept in oftree-land. The handling of platform data is my main concern as someone working primarily on platform independant drivers - function pointers are a particular problem but the possibility of having to write code to handle both OF and non-OF systems to cater for systems using both approaches is also a concern for me. > oftree could be a great tool if these things would be resolved. > Currently they are not, and in result, ARM just works and is easy, > whereas on PowerPC systems people often spend more time working on > binding stuff than on the actual functionality. This worries me too, my experiences with OF device tree handling for ASoC have been pretty negative - but then audio is one of the worst cases for handling within the device tree.