Re: TSI ethernet PHY question

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

On Fri, 2007-05-25 at 02:57 +0200, Segher Boessenkool wrote:
> 
> However in this case you could put a property in the
> PHY node, similar things have been done before.  It's
> ugly and doesn't solve any problem (it is just as much
> work to parse the board model as to find this magic
> property), and you *still* should pass in the flag
> from the platform layer, and not have the phylib try
> to handle it by itself.

I disagree, it's not ugly and nicely solves the problem.

For example, imagine you have 2 PHYs on a board and only one needs the
workaround ? Really, the PHY node is the best place for it.

> The ethernet driver is a powerpc-specific driver, that's
> one thing.  Also, the workaround should be initiated by
> the platform code, so has to go through the ethernet driver
> (since it instantiates the phylib driver).

Still... it can be done via generic calls in powerpc ethernet drivers
that set flags in phylib based on things in the device-tree.

> For many similar workarounds, the ethernet driver _does_ have
> to cooperate in the workaround.  For some other such workarounds,
> the soc code has to be involved.  Etc. etc.

> You can do a quick "fix" now by doing this magic property
> thing, and it sure is a *quick* fix; but later on you'll
> have to do some other workarounds the proper way.  And
> you'll be stuck with the property forever.  Not such a
> big deal, sure; hey, I already _did_ say I'm okay with it,
> right?  It's just the "wrong" thing to do ;-)

I have no bloody idea what you consider "the proper way"

I think it's the right thing to do.

Ben.