From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Linus Walleij Subject: Re: [Ksummit-2013-discuss] [ATTEND] Handling of devicetree bindings Date: Mon, 15 Jul 2013 23:07:36 +0200 Message-ID: References: <20130713192647.GA3798@katana> <20130713204927.GA1124@roeck-us.net> <20130714181331.GC26513@roeck-us.net> <20130715082915.5142547a@lwn.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: In-Reply-To: <20130715082915.5142547a-T1hC0tSOHrs@public.gmane.org> List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: devicetree-discuss-bounces+gldd-devicetree-discuss=m.gmane.org-uLR06cmDAlY/bJ5BZ2RsiQ@public.gmane.org Sender: "devicetree-discuss" To: Jonathan Corbet Cc: "devicetree-discuss-uLR06cmDAlY/bJ5BZ2RsiQ@public.gmane.org" , ksummit-2013-discuss-cunTk1MwBs9QetFLy7KEm3xJsTq8ys+cHZ5vskTnxNA@public.gmane.org, Guenter Roeck List-Id: devicetree@vger.kernel.org On Mon, Jul 15, 2013 at 4:29 PM, Jonathan Corbet wrote: > Do we need a kernel summit discussion, or do we just need a good > document? Or, to phrase the question another way, are we lacking a > consensus among the clueful regarding how device tree bindings should be > designed, or are we simply lacking education? I think both. I fear some maintainers do not know enough about the subject to know if a binding should be rejected. We have for example: Documentation/devicetree/usage-model.txt But this does not at all qualify anyone to judge (dredd) the validity of some new $binding. It's not kerneldoc, where everything is pretty easy to understand, it is way more complex. It looks simple to begin with: registers, IRQs, compatible strings ... then all of a sudden: how many #foo-cells should this have? 0, 1 or 4? foo: bar@12345 {} what naming convention should be used here? What is an alias? Basically you have to know it all to properly review that. The recent discussions about clock bindings is a good example. Or the fact that we do not have common pin control binings because it was simply too hard to get people to agree: I got the committe work dumped in my knee and I did a bad job at it too. :-( Part of the problem with both major hardware description languages (ACPI and devicetree) is that the developers using either variant appear to be clueless of the other. What makes devicetree more dangerous than ACPI is that the kernel maintainers define it, it is not being given from the outside. Yours, Linus Walleij