Re: gpio-ucb1400

[Marek Vasut <marek.vasut@gmail.com>]

Dear Guenter Roeck,

> On Sat, Mar 30, 2013 at 08:20:44PM +0100, Marek Vasut wrote:
> > Dear Guenter Roeck,
> > 
> > > On Fri, Mar 29, 2013 at 08:46:39PM +0100, Jean Delvare wrote:
> > > > Hi all,
> > > > 
> > > > In September 2009, a driver for the GPIO function of the UCB1400 chip
> > > > was added to the kernel tree. The probe function of this driver
> > > > requires ucbdata to be set. The only place where this happens is in
> > > > function ucb1400_gpio_set_data(). This function was never call, and
> > > > still isn't. So this is dead code for 3.5 years as far as the
> > > > upstream kernel is concerned.
> > > > 
> > > > To make things worse, this driver can't be built as a module, for no
> > > > good reason that I can see.
> > > > 
> > > > Marek, can you explain what was the point of submitting this driver
> > > > that nobody can use?
> > > > 
> > > > I would like either this driver to be fixed so that it can be used
> > > > (and that would IMHO start with dropping the ugly
> > > > ucb1400_gpio_set_data hook and global variable ucbdata), or this
> > > > driver to be dropped from the kernel tree. If the driver is kept, it
> > > > should be adjusted so that it can be built as a module.
> > > > 
> > > > If I overlooked something, please let me know.
> > > 
> > > Interestingly, the author made an attempt to fix that with [1]. It
> > > looks like the rest of that series was merged, but this patch wasn't,
> > > though I don't find any information about the reason.
> > 
> > It's been a while. Guenter, thanks for finding that link, but I suspect
> > the patch is heavily obsolete by now.
> 
> Oh, it most definitely is, starting with the gpio driver name. Just wonder
> why it was never applied, and why no one seems to have noticed or cared.
> 
> Jean is absolutely right - it should get fixed, or the driver should be
> dropped if no one is using it anyway.

I think ARM/palmtc was using this.

Best regards,
Marek Vasut