Re: [PATCH] powerpc: Better machine descriptions and kill magic numbers

[Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@kernel.crashing.org>]

> Because of this, I suggest keeping the mach_ part in the syntax, i.e,
> to use:
> 
> machine_is(mach_powermac) instead, and not do preprocessor mangling of
> the label name. The same would go for define_machine().
> 
> It would seem to make some sense to keep the platform types looking
> like defines (i.e. MACH_POWERMAC instead of mach_powermac) to keep it
> consistent with the CPU and firmware feature testing, but the way it's
> implemented that doesn't make much sense. That's a bit of a shame.

I'm not sure about these ... I'm definitely not fan of going uppercase (and
it makes no sense vs. the implementation as it's not macros). I also don't
get your problem with grep... the "mach_" construct is totally invisible,
so people wouldn't grep for it, but for "powermac" alone.

Or do you mean a grep on "powermac" might return too many things unrelated ?

It should be easy enough in this case to grep for machine_is(powermac) instead
then, after all, that's the only possible use...

> In the probe loop, ppc_md is copied over for each probe, that seems
> wasteful. 

I changed that from the old way indeed to allow the probe() function to
override things in ppc_md.

> Shouldn't the probe routines use and modify their own
> machdep_calls instead of ppc_md, so the copying can be done only once,
> after a match is found?

I don't like modifying their own machdep calls because the name of the
structure is hidden. In general, I prefer that things continue to only
access ppc_md. and not their own machine structure that goes away. That
means that the code "patching" it can be moved away etc... without
special case instead of having a special case in probe() that has to
reference the machine specific copy...

I doubt the memcpy per machine at boot will cause any kind of
significant performance issue ...

Ben.