Re: [RFC net-next PATCH 00/13] Add PCS core support

[Sean Anderson <sean.anderson@linux.dev>]

On 4/7/25 12:27, Kory Maincent wrote:
> On Thu,  3 Apr 2025 14:18:54 -0400
> Sean Anderson <sean.anderson@linux.dev> wrote:
> 
>> This series adds support for creating PCSs as devices on a bus with a
>> driver (patch 3). As initial users,
>> 
>> - The Lynx PCS (and all of its users) is converted to this system (patch 5)
>> - The Xilinx PCS is broken out from the AXI Ethernet driver (patches 6-8)
>> - The Cadence MACB driver is converted to support external PCSs (namely
>>   the Xilinx PCS) (patches 9-10).
>> 
>> The last few patches add device links for pcs-handle to improve boot times,
>> and add compatibles for all Lynx PCSs.
>> 
>> Care has been taken to ensure backwards-compatibility. The main source
>> of this is that many PCS devices lack compatibles and get detected as
>> PHYs. To address this, pcs_get_by_fwnode_compat allows drivers to edit
>> the devicetree to add appropriate compatibles.
> 
> I don't dive into your patch series and I don't know if you have heard about it
> but Christian Marangi is currently working on fwnode for PCS:
> https://lore.kernel.org/netdev/20250406221423.9723-1-ansuelsmth@gmail.com
> 
> Maybe you should sync with him!

I saw that series and made some comments. He is CC'd on this one.

I think this approach has two advantages:

- It completely solves the problem of the PCS being unregistered while the netdev
  (or whatever) is up
- I have designed the interface to make it easy to convert existing
  drivers that may not be able to use the "standard" probing process
  (because they have to support other devicetree structures for
  backwards-compatibility).

--Sean