Re: [PATCH RFC 2/2] phy: phy-can-transceiver: Add support for setting mux

[Aswath Govindraju <a-govindraju@ti.com>]

Hi Peter,

On 18/11/21 6:14 pm, Peter Rosin wrote:
>>> Ok, I see what you mean now, sorry for being dense. If we allow this then
>>> there is a need to add a special value that means all/many states (such as
>>> -1 or something such) so that a mux-control can be used simultaneously by
>>> drivers "pointing at" a specific state like you want to do, and by the
>>> existing "application" style drivers that wraps the whole mux control.
>>>
>>> I.e. something like this
>>>
>>> 	mux: mux {
>>> 		compatible = "mux-gpio";
>>> 		...
>>>
>>> 		#mux-control-cells = <1>; /* one more than previously */
>>> 	};
>>>
>>> 	phy {
>>> 		...
>>>
>>> 		mux-control = <&mux 3>; /* point to specific state */
>>> 	};
>>>
>>> 	i2c-mux {
>>> 		compatible = "i2c-mux-gpmux";
>>> 		parent = <&i2c0>
>>> 		mux-control = <&mux (-1)>; /* many states needed */
>>>
>>> 		...
>>>
>>> 		i2c@1 {
>>> 			eeprom@50 {
>>> 				...
>>> 			};
>>> 		};
>>>
>>> 		i2c@2 {
>>> 			...
>>> 		};
>>> 	};
>>>
>>> Yes, I realize that accesses to the eeprom cannot happen if the mux is
>>> constantly selected and locked in state 3 by the phy, and that a mux with
>>> one channel being a phy and other channels being I2C might not be
>>> realistic, but the same gpio lines might control several muxes that are
>>> used for separate signals solving at least the latter "problem" with this
>>> completely made up example. Anyway, the above is in principle, and HW
>>> designs are sometimes too weird for words.
>>>
>>
>> This is almost exactly what I was intending to implement except for one
>> more change. The state of the mux will always be represented using the
>> second argument(i.e. #mux-control-cells = <2>).
>>
>> For example,
>> mux-controls = <&mux 0 1>, <&mux 1 0>;
>>
>>
>> With this I think we wouldn't need a special value for all or many states.
> 
> But you do. Several consumers need to be able to point to the same mux
> control. If some of these consumers need one state, and some other need
> all/many, the consumers needing many needs to be able to say that. Listing
> many entries in mux-control = <>; is misleading since then the binding implies
> that you could have different mux controls for each state, which is not
> possible, at least not in the current implementations. It would also be
> wasteful to needlessly establish links to the same mux control multiple
> times, and the binding would cause bloated device trees even if you tried
> to optimize this in the drivers. Therefore, I require a special value so
> that consumers can continue to point at the mux control as a whole, even
> if some other consumers of the same mux control wants to point at a specific
> state.
> 


Understood. One issue that I see is that we certainly can not use the
first argument for representing state as it will result in errors for
current users.

I feel that the safest way to go would be by using a second argument to
represent the state or to represent multiple states can be used by the
driver. The issue that I see with this approach is that currently the
fist argument is used to select the line number from the mux and if the
we use two arguments like this,

mux-controls = <&mux 0 -1>

then this would mean that line nnumber 0 in the mux could use multiple
states and for a driver to use mutiple lines we would need to add an
entry for each line which would bloat the code a well increase the
complexity in the drivers while using devm_mux_get(). So, one solution
that I could think of is to use a "-1" for the first argument too. This
would indicate that the driver would need to toggle multiple lines in
the mux

For example,

1) mux-controls = <&mux -1 3> // the driver would need to set the mux
lines to 3 for enabling it

2) mux-controls = <&mux -1 -1> //the driver would need to set the mux
lines and multiple states in the mux

3) mux-controls = <&mux 0 1> // the driver would need to set the zeroth
mux line to 1

I do see that, going with this method would make <&mux ^\d*$ ^\d*$>(i.e.
any positive number in the first argument) redundant as it can be
represented with <&mux -1 *>. However, I think is the only way so that
existing users will not see issues.


>>>> One more question that I had is, if the number of arguments match the
>>>> #mux-control-cells and if the number of arguments are greater than 1 why
>>>> is an error being returned?
>>>
>>> Changing that would require a bindings update anyway, so I simply
>>> disallowed it as an error. Not much thought went into the decision,
>>> as it couldn't be wrong to do what is being done with the bindings
>>> that exist. That said, I have no problem lifting this restriction,
>>> if there's a matching bindings update that makes it all fit.
>>>
>>
>> Sure, I think making a change in
>>
>> Documentation/devicetree/bindings/mux/gpio-mux.yaml, should be good
>> enough I assume.
> 
> Well, the new way to bind has very little to do with this being a gpio
> mux. There is no reason not to allow this way to bind for any of the
> other muxes. That said, the reg-mux binding has this:
> 
>   '#mux-control-cells':
>     const: 1
> 
> Similarly, the adi,adg792a has explicit wording on how #mux-control-cells
> works (but being a txt binding it is not checked, but that does not matter,
> bindings should be correct). I now notice that this is missing from the
> adi,adgs1408 binding, but that's an oversight.
> 
> The mux-controller binding has this:
>   '#mux-control-cells':
>     enum: [ 0, 1 ]
> 
> The mux-consumer binding should probably be updated with some words
> on this subject too.
> 
> So, all mux bindings need updates when this door is opened. And, in order
> to add this in a compatible way, the old way to bind with 0/1 cells needs
> to continue to both work and be allowed.
> 
> I think it is easiest to add something common to the mux-controller
> binding and then have the specific bindings simply inherit it from there
> instead of adding (almost) the same words to all the driver bindings.
> 

Understood, I will try to add changes in the common mux-controller
bindings itself and then reference it in the gpio-mux bindings

Thanks,
Aswath

> Cheers,
> Peter
> 
>> Thank you for the comments. I'll post a respin of this series, with the
>> above changes.