From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Mark Rutland Subject: Re: is there any value in unreferenced assignments? Date: Tue, 24 May 2016 11:57:53 +0100 Message-ID: <20160524105731.GA25374@leverpostej> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Return-path: Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: Sender: devicetree-owner-u79uwXL29TY76Z2rM5mHXA@public.gmane.org To: "Robert P. J. Day" Cc: devicetree-u79uwXL29TY76Z2rM5mHXA@public.gmane.org List-Id: devicetree@vger.kernel.org On Tue, May 24, 2016 at 06:49:40AM -0400, Robert P. J. Day wrote: > > apologies for what i'm sure is a trivial question, but is there any > point in a .dts file having "linux,phandle" assignments that are > unreferenced from anywhere in the final source file? > > i ask only because i've been handed a .dts file that admittedly > works just fine, but it contains a number of lines of the form: > > linux,phandle = ; > > where none of those numeric phandles are referenced from anywhere else > in the source file (even after processing any .dtsi files). > > one possibility is that those are leftovers before someone started > adding labels to nodes, and referring to them like that, but in my > case, the nodes defining those phandles don't even have labels, so > that seems fairly pointless. > > is there any other explanation for them? thanks. It sounds like the dts file has been decompiled from a DTB, which would explain the lack of labels. Otherwise, the phandle and linux,phandle properties are generally not expected to be set directly in a dts (though this is possible). I suspect that there were unreferenced labels in the origninal dts/dtsi, as I believe dtc adds a phandle for any label, regardless of whether it is referenced (though I could be wrong). Thanks, Mark. -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe devicetree" in the body of a message to majordomo-u79uwXL29TY76Z2rM5mHXA@public.gmane.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html