Re: [RFC PATCH 01/10] net: stmmac: move XPCS lifetime management to platform drivers

From: Maxime Chevallier <maxime.chevallier@bootlin.com>
To: Coia Prant <coiaprant@gmail.com>,
	kuba@kernel.org, davem@davemloft.net, edumazet@google.com,
	pabeni@redhat.com, andrew+netdev@lunn.ch, robh@kernel.org,
	krzk+dt@kernel.org, heiko@sntech.de
Cc: netdev@vger.kernel.org, linux-rockchip@lists.infradead.org,
	devicetree@vger.kernel.org, linux-arm-kernel@lists.infradead.org,
	linux-phy@lists.infradead.org,
	Christian Marangi <ansuelsmth@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH 01/10] net: stmmac: move XPCS lifetime management to platform drivers
Date: Wed, 15 Jul 2026 09:31:25 +0200	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <dc21b2fc-ae11-4fde-a5b9-09e2c6bee5c9@bootlin.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20260714191341.690906-2-coiaprant@gmail.com>

Hi,

+Christian

On 7/14/26 21:08, Coia Prant wrote:
> The current XPCS creation logic in stmmac_pcs_setup() is problematic
> for several reasons.
> 
> First, if a device tree specifies a "pcs-handle" but no select_pcs()
> callback is provided by the platform driver, the created XPCS is never
> used. The phylink framework requires select_pcs() to actually return
> the PCS to the core, so the pcs-handle property becomes effectively
> useless without the matching callback. This is confusing for developers
> who expect that specifying a pcs-handle in their device tree should be
> sufficient to enable the PCS.

I think Christian's work on fwnode PCS would help a lot with that PCS
handling in stmmac:

https://lore.kernel.org/netdev/20260618125752.1223-1-ansuelsmth@gmail.com/

I don't know when Christian plans to iterate, it could be worth using
that new fwnode mechanism here ?

Maxime

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