Re: [PATCH v6 2/2] of: Make of_find_node_by_path() traverse /aliases for relative paths.

[David Daney <ddaney.cavm@gmail.com>]

Grant and others,

Really this patch 2/2 is not so critical for me.  I am using it, but can 
(and perhaps should) avoid using of_find_node_by_path() altogether, thus 
making the patch unneeded.

If you would like, we can drop this one, but I would still very much 
like '[PATCH v6 1/2] of/lib: Allow scripts/dtc/libfdt to be used from 
kernel code' to be merged.

Do you want me to send the first patch separately, or could you just 
'cherry-pick' it from this set?

Thanks,
David Daney


On 02/29/2012 01:34 PM, David Daney wrote:
> On 02/29/2012 12:36 PM, David Miller wrote:
>> From: David Daney<ddaney.cavm@gmail.com>
>> Date: Wed, 29 Feb 2012 11:21:04 -0800
>>
>>> Currently all paths passed to of_find_node_by_path() must begin with a
>>> '/', indicating a full path to the desired node.
>>>
>>> Augment the look-up code so that if a path does *not* begin with '/',
>>> the path is used as the name of an /aliases property. The value of
>>> this alias is then used as the full node path to be found.
>>>
>>> Signed-off-by: David Daney<david.daney@cavium.com>
>>
>> But as the caller you sure as hell know whether you have a "/"
>> prefixed name or not.
>
> Yes, worst case we could just examine the first character of the string.
>
>>
>> Why complicate an incredibly well designed and simple function for
>> something you can create another interface for?
>>
>
> Because in this message:
>
> http://www.linux-mips.org/archives/linux-mips/2011-02/msg00147.html
>
> Grant explicitly asked me to do it this way when he said:
>
> of_find_node_by_path() needs to be fixed to also accept alias
> values so that a string that starts with a '/' is a full path, but
> no leading '/' means start with an alias. This code will lose a
> level of indentation if you can make that change to the common
> code.
>
> And then in follow ups to that conversation, we eventually came up
> with this patch.
>
> If you find it particularly objectionable, convince Grant to NACK the
> patch (but please keep me CCed on the conversation), and I will open
> code the equivalent in my drivers.
>
> Thanks,
> David Daney
>