Re: [PATCH 3/4] devicetree: add a binding for a group of regulator

[Alban Bedel <alban.bedel@avionic-design.de>]

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On Mon, 24 Nov 2014 15:24:33 +0000
Mark Brown <broonie@kernel.org> wrote:

> On Mon, Nov 24, 2014 at 02:02:02PM +0100, Alban Bedel wrote:
> 
> > +This binding allow creating a group of regulators for use with simple
> > +drivers that only expect a single power supply. Additionally it is
> > +possible to enforce the enable ordering to create simple power up
> > +sequences.
> 
> Absoutely not, this sort of scripting is not sensible - if the consumer
> device has multiple supplies the consumer device should be working with
> them independently and if the consumer has ordering constraints it needs
> to enforce them itself.  Trying to solve this problem with a bodge in
> the regulator API just isn't the right place, leaving aside the above
> most power sequences involve things other than regulators like clocks
> and reset signals so just doing things purely at the regulator API level
> isn't ging to solve the problem.  
> 
> Please look for the generic power sequence stuff that was getting
> discussed a while back and try to resurrect that if you feel there's a
> compelling reason to have this functionality without doing it for
> drivers.

Honestly my primary aim wasn't the sequencing, but rather to increase
the usefulness of generic drivers. Generic driver generally only
manipulate a single supply, however many hardware might have more,
and won't need any specific power up ordering. Having to write a full
new driver just because of an extra supply doesn't seems to make much
sense to me.

As alternative solution to this problem I though about allowing a list
of regulator for the supplies:

 vin-supply = <&reg1>, <&reg2>;

The API could still return a single consumer but it would operate on
all the regulators in the list instead of just one. Would that be a
better solution?

Alban

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