Re: [RFC v4 01/14] regulator: of: Add helper for getting all supplies

Peter Chen
2016-06-12T07:29:01Z

On Fri, Jun 10, 2016 at 12:30:56PM -0500, Rob Herring wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 09, 2016 at 01:42:02PM +0200, Krzysztof Kozlowski wrote:
> > On 06/09/2016 12:29 PM, Mark Brown wrote:
> > > On Thu, Jun 09, 2016 at 11:44:18AM +0200, Krzysztof Kozlowski wrote:
> > >> Few drivers have a need of getting regulator supplies without knowing
> > >> their names:
> > >> 1. The Simple Framebuffer driver works on setup provided by bootloader
> > >> (outside of scope of kernel);
> > >> 2. Generic power sequence driver may be attached to any device node.
> > >>
> > >> Add a Device Tree helper for parsing "-supply" properties and returning
> > >> allocated bulk regulator consumers.
> > >
> > > I'm still very concerned that this is just an invitation to people to
> > > write half baked regulator consumers and half baked DTs to go along with
> > > it, making it a standard API that doesn't have big red flags on it that
> > > will flag up when "normal" drivers use it is not good. Right now this
> > > just looks like a standard API and people are going to just start using
> > > it. If we are going to do this perhaps we need a separate header or
> > > something to help flag this up.
> >
> > No problem, I can move it to a special header. Actually, if you dislike
> > this as an API, it does not have to be in header at all. I can just
> > duplicate the simplefb code.
> >
> > > In the case of power sequences I'd expect the sequences to perform
> > > operations on named supplies - the core shouldn't know what the supplies
> > > are but the thing specifying the sequence should.
> >
> > Hm, so maybe passing names like:
> >
> > usb3503@08 {
> > reset-gpios = <&gpx3 5 GPIO_ACTIVE_HIGH>;
> > initial-mode = <1>;
> > vdd-supply = <&buck8_reg>;
> > foo-supply = <&buck9_reg>;
> >
> > power-sequence;
> > power-sequence-supplies = "vdd", "foo";
>
> This alone would be fine as it is just one property, but then what's
> next? power-sequence-delay, power-sequence-clocks, etc. What if you
> need to express ordering relationship of supplies, clocks, gpios? We end
> up with a scripting language in DT and we don't want to have that.
>

Can we do things like below:

- DT describes hardware elements (clock, gpios, etc) for power sequence, and we
need a node for power sequence.
- Power sequence framework handles getting hardware elements.
- Power sequence platform driver handles special sequence for devices,
and we can create some generic drivers for generic devices.

--

Best Regards,
Peter Chen