Re: [PATCH 1/2] async: async device driver probing

[Greg KH <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>]

On Wed, Aug 13, 2014 at 10:20:33AM -0700, Dmitry Torokhov wrote:
> Hi Greg,
> 
> On Sat, Feb 08, 2014 at 10:27:29AM -0800, Greg KH wrote:

February?  That's an old thread to dig up...


> > On Sat, Feb 08, 2014 at 07:05:38PM +0800, falcon@meizu.com wrote:
> > > From: Wu Zhangjin <wuzhangjin@gmail.com>
> > > 
> > > [*Note*: NOT applicable, only for comments.]
> > > 
> > > To async the slow driver probing function of some devices, the device probing
> > > support is modified to support async scheduling.
> > > 
> > > In order to async your driver probing function, please mask the async_probe
> > > flag to 1, and to make sure one asynced probing is executed before an specified
> > > point, please call async_synchronize_full() in that point..
> > > 
> > > Usage:
> > > 
> > > 	static struct i2c_driver test_driver = {
> > > 		.driver = {
> > > 			.name   = TEST_DEV_NAME,
> > > 			.owner  = THIS_MODULE,
> > > 	+               .async_probe = 1,
> > > 		},
> > 
> > Why is this needed, we have defered probing and the container stuff, so
> > what problem is this solving?
> 
> Deferred probing only helps if resources are not ready yet, but
> sometimes we have a slow(ish) device which initialization stalls probing
> the rest of the system. For example a touchpad can take up to a second
> to calibrate itself after reset. One could try scheduling reset
> asynchronously, or try to offload it to open(), but that is not always
> best:
> 
> 1. Manual async: what to do when reset fails? Ideally we do not want to
> leave driver half-way bound with device not operable, but much rather
> signal the rest of the system that binding of the device failed and
> release all resources.
> 
> 2. Offload to open: the same issue as with manually doing async reset,
> plus sometimes we do not know all parameters that we should create input
> device with until after we reset physical device and queried it for
> capabilities.
> 
> Marking a driver to tell device core to execute probe asynchronously [at
> boot time] seems like a very appealing feature from driver author POV.
> 
> What is the container stuff you mention?

drivers/base/container.c