Question on device links

[Linus Walleij <linus.walleij@linaro.org>]

Hi Saravana,

please help me to look at this device link stuff in the pinctrl
subsystem!

I started at one point to add device links for pin control and GPIO
based on something that was done inside a pin control driver,
resulting in these patches:

Enforcing links in some select drivers:
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/linusw/linux-pinctrl.git/log/?h=consumer-links

Enforcing it over all drivers:
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/linusw/linux-pinctrl.git/commit/?h=consumer-link-enforce

I am under the impression that your generic dependency work
now made these patches obsolete, so I can drop these branches
and forget about it, is that correct?

What about these two drivers we already have:

$ git grep link_consumers drivers/pinctrl/
drivers/pinctrl/core.c: if (pctldev->desc->link_consumers)
drivers/pinctrl/pinctrl-stmfx.c:        pctl->pctl_desc.link_consumers = true;
drivers/pinctrl/stm32/pinctrl-stm32.c:  pctl->pctl_desc.link_consumers = true;

The effect will be to enforce links for each handle from a consumer
of a pinctrl handle:

static void pinctrl_link_add(struct pinctrl_dev *pctldev,
                             struct device *consumer)
{
        if (pctldev->desc->link_consumers)
                device_link_add(consumer, pctldev->dev,
                                DL_FLAG_PM_RUNTIME |
                                DL_FLAG_AUTOREMOVE_CONSUMER);
}

Is this also in effect superceded with core dependency tracking
so this code should simply be deleted?

Thanks!
Linus Walleij