Re: [PATCH] driver core: Early dev_name() support.

[Paul Mundt <lethal@linux-sh.org>]

On Tue, Mar 09, 2010 at 06:37:27PM -0800, Greg KH wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 09, 2010 at 03:57:53PM +0900, Paul Mundt wrote:
> > Presently early platform devices suffer from the fact they are unable to
> > use dev_xxx() calls early on due to dev_name() and others being
> > unavailable at the time ->probe() is called.
> > 
> > This implements early init_name construction from the matched name/id
> > pair following the semantics of the late device/driver match. As a
> > result, matched IDs (inclusive of requested ones) are preserved when the
> > handoff from the early platform code happens at kobject initialization
> > time.
> > 
> > Since we still require kmalloc slabs to be available at this point, using
> > kstrdup() for establishing the init_name works fine. This subsequently
> > needs to be tested from dev_name() prior to the init_name being cleared
> > by the driver core. We don't kfree() since others will already have a
> > handle on the string long before the kobject initialization takes place.
> > 
> > This is also needed to permit drivers to use the clock framework early,
> > without having to manually construct their own device IDs from the match
> > id/name pair locally (needed by the early console and timer code on sh
> > and arm).
> 
> Is this change something that we need for .34?  Or can it wait for .35?
> 
If it went in for .34 we would get properly dev_name() resolution in the
error paths for the existing early platform drivers, but that's obviously
not critical.

I have a bunch of work I plan to do on top of it for 2.6.35, so I was
planning on carrying it in a topic branch once I got your Acked-by.