Re: [PATCH v3 1/3] pwm: make it possible to apply pwm changes in atomic context

[Hans de Goede <hdegoede@redhat.com>]

Hi Sean,

On 10/22/23 12:46, Sean Young wrote:
> Hi Hans,
> 
> On Sat, Oct 21, 2023 at 11:08:22AM +0200, Hans de Goede wrote:
>> On 10/19/23 12:51, Uwe Kleine-König wrote:
>>> On Wed, Oct 18, 2023 at 03:57:48PM +0200, Hans de Goede wrote:
>>>> On 10/17/23 11:17, Sean Young wrote:
>>>>> Some drivers require sleeping, for example if the pwm device is connected
>>>>> over i2c. The pwm-ir-tx requires precise timing, and sleeping causes havoc
>>>>> with the generated IR signal when sleeping occurs.
>>>>>
>>>>> This patch makes it possible to use pwm when the driver does not sleep,
>>>>> by introducing the pwm_can_sleep() function.
>>>>>
>>>>> Signed-off-by: Sean Young <sean@mess.org>
>>>>
>>>> I have no objection to this patch by itself, but it seems a bit
>>>> of unnecessary churn to change all current callers of pwm_apply_state()
>>>> to a new API.
>>>
>>> The idea is to improve the semantic of the function name, see
>>> https://lore.kernel.org/linux-pwm/20231013180449.mcdmklbsz2rlymzz@pengutronix.de
>>> for more context.
>>
>> Hmm, so the argument here is that the GPIO API has this, but GPIOs
>> generally speaking can be set atomically, so there not being able
>> to set it atomically is special.
>>
>> OTOH we have many many many other kernel functions which may sleep
>> and we don't all postfix them with _can_sleep.
>>
>> And for PWM controllers pwm_apply_state is IMHO sorta expected to
>> sleep. Many of these are attached over I2C so things will sleep,
>> others have a handshake to wait for the current dutycycle to
>> end before you can apply a second change on top of an earlier
>> change during the current dutycycle which often also involves
>> sleeping.
>>
>> So the natural/expeected thing for pwm_apply_state() is to sleep
>> and thus it does not need a postfix for this IMHO.
> 
> Most pwm drivers look like they can be made to work in atomic context,
> I think. Like you say this is not the case for all of them. Whatever
> we choose to be the default for pwm_apply_state(), we should have a
> clear function name for the alternative. This is essentially why
> pam_apply_cansleep() was picked.
> 
> The alternative to pwm_apply_cansleep() is to have a function name
> which implies it can be used from atomic context. However, 
> pwm_apply_atomic() is not great because the "atomic" could be
> confused with the PWM atomic API, not the kernel process/atomic
> context.

Well pwm_apply_state() is the atomic PWM interface right?

So to me pwm_apply_state_atomic() would be clearly about
running atomically.

> So what should the non-sleeping function be called then? 
>  - pwm_apply_cannotsleep() 
>  - pwm_apply_nosleep()
>  - pwm_apply_nonsleeping()
>  - pwm_apply_atomic_context()

I would just go with:

pwm_apply_state_atomic()

but if this is disliked by others then lets just rename

pwm_apply_state() to pwm_apply_state_cansleep() as
is done in this patch and use plain pwm_apply_state()
for the new atomic-context version.

Regards,

Hans



> 
>>> I think it's very subjective if you consider this
>>> churn or not.
>>
>> I consider it churn because I don't think adding a postfix
>> for what is the default/expected behavior is a good idea
>> (with GPIOs not sleeping is the expected behavior).
>>
>> I agree that this is very subjective and very much goes
>> into the territory of bikeshedding. So please consider
>> the above my 2 cents on this and lets leave it at that.
> 
> You have a valid point. Let's focus on having descriptive function names.
> 
>>> While it's nice to have every caller converted in a single
>>> step, I'd go for
>>>
>>> 	#define pwm_apply_state(pwm, state) pwm_apply_cansleep(pwm, state)
>>>
>>> , keep that macro for a while and convert all users step by step. This
>>> way we don't needlessly break oot code and the changes to convert to the
>>> new API can go via their usual trees without time pressure.
>>
>> I don't think there are enough users of pwm_apply_state() to warrant
>> such an exercise.
>>
>> So if people want to move ahead with the _can_sleep postfix addition
>> (still not a fan) here is my acked-by for the drivers/platform/x86
>> changes, for merging this through the PWM tree in a single commit:
>>
>> Acked-by: Hans de Goede <hdegoede@redhat.com>
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Sean
>