From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from mail.bootlin.com ([62.4.15.54]) by bombadil.infradead.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1 #2 (Red Hat Linux)) id 1fkQ5g-00078D-Uy for linux-mtd@lists.infradead.org; Tue, 31 Jul 2018 08:33:15 +0000 Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2018 10:32:59 +0200 From: Boris Brezillon To: Miquel Raynal Cc: Daniel Mack , Haojian Zhuang , Robert Jarzmik , Richard Weinberger , linux-mtd@lists.infradead.org, David Woodhouse , Brian Norris , Marek Vasut , Mike Dunn , Sergey Larin Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH] mtd: rawnand: Remove docg4 Message-ID: <20180731103259.7ec1be8d@bbrezillon> In-Reply-To: <20180731102035.018ad7d0@xps13> References: <20180730201341.17365-1-boris.brezillon@bootlin.com> <20180731102035.018ad7d0@xps13> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit List-Id: Linux MTD discussion mailing list List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , On Tue, 31 Jul 2018 10:20:35 +0200 Miquel Raynal wrote: > Hi Boris, > > Boris Brezillon wrote on Mon, 30 Jul 2018 > 22:13:41 +0200: > > > The diskonchip G4 driver does not fit very well in the raw/parallel > > NAND framework simply because such chips have an internal controller > > translating DoC-specific commands into NAND ones. > > > > Keeping such a driver in the raw NAND framework is a real burden for > > NAND maintainers. > > > > Not to mention that some part in this drivers are a bit worrisome: > > > > - writes are done by subpages, even though we're interfacing with an MLC > > chip which are known to not support subpage writes very well (it might > > be that the FTL handles the complexity for us though) > > > > - some part of the code are simply ignoring return codes of function that > > can fail in a few occasions > > > > - there's a hack to support OOB writes when no data is provided. This > > operation is not supported by the chip and should have been rejected, > > and nandwrite and other userspace tools should have been patched to > > deal with such devices > > > > - the driver is apparently broken when ignore_badblocks module param > > is not set to 1 and nobody noticed that (don't know since when this > > is the case, but it's not a recent change) > > http://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/linux-mtd/2018-July/082472.html > > > > Add to that the fact that we already have a docg3 driver in > > drivers/mtd/devices/docg3.c and, looking at the code (and regs), it > > seems docg3 and docg4 have a lot in common (even the author of this > > driver seemed to have realized that interfacing with the raw NAND > > framework might have been a bad idea > > http://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/linux-mtd/2012-January/039517.html). > > > > For all these reasons, I'm proposing to remove this driver. If anyone > > ever wants to add support for this chip back, I'd suggest extending > > the docg3 driver instead of adding a completely new driver. > > > > Signed-off-by: Boris Brezillon > > Cc: Mike Dunn > > Cc: Robert Jarzmik > > Cc: Sergey Larin > > --- > > I do agree in removing this driver. > > I just checked for docg4 references and it looks like palmeo.c board > file has some code related to it, enclosed in a > > #if IS_ENABLED(CONFIG_MTD_NAND_DOCG4) > > Besides the fact that it is the only user, that's probably something > we should also remove. > > Plus, I recently added a mention to the docg4 driver in nand_base.c > during the conversion to nand_scan() (to skip nand_scan_ident()). It > might be worth removing the extra code or at least the reference in the > comment. Yep. Let's wait for more feedback, and if we all agree that this driver should be removed I'll send a new version with 2 new patches to remove the unused code.