Re: [PATCH v2 1/5] driver core: add a faux bus for use when a simple device/bus is needed

Danilo Krummrich
2025-02-04T11:44:10Z

On Tue, Feb 04, 2025 at 12:09:13PM +0100, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
> Many drivers abuse the platform driver/bus system as it provides a
> simple way to create and bind a device to a driver-specific set of
> probe/release functions. Instead of doing that, and wasting all of the
> memory associated with a platform device, here is a "faux" bus that
> can be used instead.
>
> Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
> ---
> v2: - renamed bus and root device to just "faux" thanks to Thomas
> - removed the one-driver-per-device and now just have one driver
> entirely thanks to Danilo
> - kerneldoc fixups and additions and string handling bounds checks
> hanks to Andy
> - coding style fix thanks to Jonathan
> - tested that the destroy path actually works
>
> drivers/base/Makefile | 2 +-
> drivers/base/base.h | 1 +
> drivers/base/faux.c | 196 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> drivers/base/init.c | 1 +
> include/linux/device/faux.h | 31 ++++++
> 5 files changed, 230 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
> create mode 100644 drivers/base/faux.c
> create mode 100644 include/linux/device/faux.h

I really like it, it's as simply as it can be.

Please find one nit below, otherwise

Reviewed-by: Danilo Krummrich <dakr@kernel.org>

>
> +/**
> + * faux_device_destroy - destroy a faux device
> + * @faux_dev: faux device to destroy
> + *
> + * Unregister and free all memory associated with a faux device that was
> + * previously created with a call to faux_device_create().

Can we really claim that this frees all memory? Someone can still have a
reference to the underlying struct device, right?

> + */
> +void faux_device_destroy(struct faux_device *faux_dev)
> +{
> + struct device *dev = &faux_dev->dev;
> +
> + if (IS_ERR_OR_NULL(faux_dev))
> + return;
> +
> + device_del(dev);
> +
> + /* The final put_device() will clean up the driver we created for this device. */
> + put_device(dev);

Same here, how do we know it's the final one? I also think the "clean up the
driver we created for this device" part isn't true any longer.

> +}
> +EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL(faux_device_destroy);