Re: [PATCH 1/4] pwm_backlight: Fix PWM levels support in non DT case

[Thierry Reding <thierry.reding@avionic-design.de>]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2308 bytes --]

On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 09:17:04AM +0100, Peter Ujfalusi wrote:
> On 01/28/2013 10:01 PM, Thierry Reding wrote:
> > On Tue, Jan 22, 2013 at 02:39:53PM +0100, Peter Ujfalusi wrote:
> >> It is expected that board files would have:
> >> static unsigned int bl_levels[] = { 0, 50, 100, 150, 200, 250, };
> >>
> >> static struct platform_pwm_backlight_data bl_data = {
> >> 	.levels = bl_levels,
> >> 	.max_brightness = ARRAY_SIZE(bl_levels),
> >> 	.dft_brightness = 4,
> >> 	.pwm_period_ns = 7812500,
> >> };
> >>
> >> In this case the max_brightness would be out of range in the levels array.
> >> Decrement the received max_brightness in every case (DT or non DT) when the
> >> levels has been provided.
> > 
> > What's wrong with specifying .max_brightness = ARRAY_SIZE(bl_levels) - 1
> > instead?
> 
> There is nothing wrong with that either but IMHO it is more natural for board
> files to use just ARRAY_SIZE(bl_levels). In this way the handling of
> data->max_brightness among non DT and DT booted kernel is more uniform in the
> driver itself.

The .max_brightness field is defined to be the maximum value that you
can set the brightness to. If you use .levels and set .max_brightness to
ARRAY_SIZE() then that's no longer true because the maximum value for
the brightness will actually be ARRAY_SIZE() - 1.

The reason why in the DT case we decrement .max_brightness is that it is
used as a temporary variable to keep the number of levels, which
corresponds to ARRAY_SIZE() in your example, and adjust it later on to
match the definition. That's an implementation detail.

Platform data content should be encoded properly without knowledge of
the internal implementation.

> Right now all board files are using only the .max_brightness to specify the
> maximum value, I could not find any users of .levels in the kernel.

Yes. But this is the legacy mode which should be considered deprecated.
The reason why the concept of brightness-levels was introduced back when
the DT bindings were created was that pretty much no hardware in
existence actually works that way. This was a topic of discussion at the
time when I first proposed these changes, see for example:

	http://www.mail-archive.com/devicetree-discuss@lists.ozlabs.org/msg09472.html

Thierry

[-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 836 bytes --]