Re: [PATCH 2/4] dt-bindings: sram: add documentation for reserved-only flag

[Mian Yousaf Kaukab <ykaukab-l3A5Bk7waGM@public.gmane.org>]

On Tue, May 12, 2020 at 01:45:28PM -0600, Stephen Warren wrote:
> On 5/12/20 8:48 AM, Mian Yousaf Kaukab wrote:
> > Add documentation for the new optional flag added for SRAM driver.
> 
> > diff --git a/Documentation/devicetree/bindings/sram/sram.yaml b/Documentation/devicetree/bindings/sram/sram.yaml
> 
> > +  reserved-only:
> > +    description:
> > +      The flag indicating, that only SRAM reserved regions have to be remapped.
> > +      remapping type is selected depending upon no-memory-wc as usual.
> > +    type: boolean
> 
> This feels a bit like a SW flag rather than a HW description, so I'm not
> sure it's appropriate to put it into DT.

Reserved regions themselves are software descriptions, no? Then we have 'pool'
flag which is again a software flag and so on. This flag falls into same
category and nothing out of ordinary.
> 
> Are there any cases where the SW should map all of the SRAM, i.e. where
> we wouldn't expect to set reserved-only? [...]

Yes, here are a few examples:
arch/arm/boot/dts/aspeed-g*.dtsi
arch/arm/boot/dts/at91*.dtsi
arch/arm/boot/dts/bcm7445.dtsi
Then arch/arm/boot/dts/dra7.dtsi is an example where we should map everything
except the reserved region.

> [...] I'd expect reserved-only to be
> the default, and perhaps only, mode of operation for the SRAM driver.

It will break compatibility with existing dtbs.

> If we can't do that because some SW currently expects to be able to map
> arbitrary portions of the SRAM, shouldn't that SW be fixed to tell the
> SRAM driver which parts it's using, hence still allowing the driver to
> only map in-use portions?

User doesn’t need sram driver in that case. It can use genalloc api directly.

BR,
Yousaf