Re: [PATCH] rust: driver: let probe() return impl PinInit<Self, Error>

["Danilo Krummrich" <dakr@kernel.org>]

On Fri Oct 17, 2025 at 3:04 PM CEST, Alice Ryhl wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 16, 2025 at 02:55:28PM +0200, Danilo Krummrich wrote:
>> The driver model defines the lifetime of the private data stored in (and
>> owned by) a bus device to be valid from when the driver is bound to a
>> device (i.e. from successful probe()) until the driver is unbound from
>> the device.
>> 
>> This is already taken care of by the Rust implementation of the driver
>> model. However, we still ask drivers to return a Result<Pin<KBox<Self>>>
>> from probe().
>> 
>> Unlike in C, where we do not have the concept of initializers, but
>> rather deal with uninitialized memory, drivers can just return an
>> impl PinInit<Self, Error> instead.
>> 
>> This contributed to more clarity to the fact that a driver returns it's
>> device private data in probe() and the Rust driver model owns the data,
>> manages the lifetime and - considering the lifetime - provides (safe)
>> accessors for the driver.
>> 
>> Hence, let probe() functions return an impl PinInit<Self, Error> instead
>> of Result<Pin<KBox<Self>>>.
>> 
>> Signed-off-by: Danilo Krummrich <dakr@kernel.org>
>> ---
>> Depends on a minor pin-init patch [1] (Benno will send it to the list
>> soon). A branch with this patch and the pin-init dependency is available
>> in [2].
>> 
>> [1] https://github.com/Rust-for-Linux/pin-init/pull/86/commits
>> [2] https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/dakr/linux.git/log/?h=probe_return
>
> Overall LGTM.
> Reviewed-by: Alice Ryhl <aliceryhl@google.com>

Thanks!

>>  impl Device<CoreInternal> {
>>      /// Store a pointer to the bound driver's private data.
>> -    pub fn set_drvdata(&self, data: impl ForeignOwnable) {
>> +    pub fn set_drvdata<T: 'static>(&self, data: impl PinInit<T, Error>) -> Result {
>> +        let data = KBox::pin_init(data, GFP_KERNEL)?;
>
> Perhaps the gfp flags should be an argument set_drvdata?

There shouldn't be a need, so I'd rather do that should we find a valid case.