Re: [RFC PATCH 6/9] gpiolib: add API to get gpio desc and flags

[Aaron Lu <aaron.lu@intel.com>]

On 08/19/2014 04:56 PM, Mika Westerberg wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 18, 2014 at 09:24:48AM -0700, Alexandre Courbot wrote:
>> On Fri, Aug 15, 2014 at 11:53 PM, Mika Westerberg
>> <mika.westerberg@linux.intel.com> wrote:
>>> diff --git a/drivers/gpio/gpiolib.c b/drivers/gpio/gpiolib.c
>>> index 2ebc9071e354..e6c2413a6fbf 100644
>>> --- a/drivers/gpio/gpiolib.c
>>> +++ b/drivers/gpio/gpiolib.c
>>> @@ -2644,6 +2644,24 @@ static struct gpio_desc *acpi_find_gpio(struct device *dev, const char *con_id,
>>>         return desc;
>>>  }
>>>
>>> +struct gpio_desc *dev_get_gpiod_flags(struct device *dev, unsigned int idx,
>>> +                                     enum gpio_lookup_flags *flags)
>>> +{
>>> +       struct gpio_desc *desc = ERR_PTR(-ENOENT);
>>> +
>>> +       if (!dev || !flags)
>>> +               return ERR_PTR(-EINVAL);
>>> +
>>> +       /* Using device tree? */
>>> +       if (IS_ENABLED(CONFIG_OF) && dev->of_node)
>>> +               desc = of_find_gpio(dev, NULL, idx, flags);
>>> +       else if (IS_ENABLED(CONFIG_ACPI) && ACPI_COMPANION(dev))
>>> +               desc = acpi_get_gpiod_flags(dev, idx, flags);
>>> +
>>> +       return desc;
>>> +}
>>> +EXPORT_SYMBOL(dev_get_gpiod_flags);
>>
>> Putting aside the fact that this function is clearly ACPI-centric (no
>> con_id parameter and no handling of the platform interface), I have
>> two big problems with it and it ending up in the consumer interface:
>>
>> 1) The returned descriptor is not requested by gpiolib, which means no
>> check is made about whether the GPIO has already been requested by
>> someone else, and another driver can very well request the same GPIO
>> later and obtain it. Any descriptor returned by a function in
>> consumer.h *must* be properly requested. Furthermore the 1:1 mapping
>> between GPIO descriptors and GPIO numbers is not something we can take
>> for granted (since it will likely change soon), so this practice is
>> definitely to ban.
> 
> My bad, somehow I missed the part that it never requested the GPIO.
> Thanks for pointing it out.
> 
>> 2) It exposes the GPIO flags, while they are supposed to be opaque to consumers.
> 
> And this, of course we should be using gpiod_is_active_low() and similar
> functions that work with descriptors.
> 
>> These two points would somehow be acceptable if this function was
>> gpiolib-private, but here it is clearly not the case and this allows
>> pretty nasty thing to happen. Basically you are using it to take
>> advantage of the gpiod lookup mechanism and then quickly fall back to
>> the legacy integer interface. That's really not something to encourage
>> - these drivers should be converted to use gpiod internally (while
>> preserving integer-based lookup for compatiblity, if needed).
>>
>> In patch 8 you say:
>>
>> "this can be solved by adding a new field of type
>> struct gpio_desc but then there is another problem: the devm_gpiod_get
>> needs to operate on the button device instead of its parent device that
>> has the driver binded, so when the driver is unloaded, the resources for
>> the gpio will not get freed automatically."
>>
>> I'd very much prefer that you use the non-devm variant of gpiod_get()
>> and free the resources manually when the driver is unloaded than this
>> workaround that introduces an loophole in the gpiod consumer lookup
>> functions.
> 
> I agree and we are going to rework this and the consumer patches to do
> exactly what you say.
 
I agree, and thanks for the suggestions Alexandre.
Will work on this and send an update when it's ready.

Regards,
Aaron