Re: [Patch v2 1/2] gpio: add GPIO hogging mechanism

Alexandre Courbot
2014-12-04T14:42:15Z

On Thu, Dec 4, 2014 at 11:27 PM, Pantelis Antoniou
<panto@antoniou-consulting.com> wrote:
> Hi Alexandre,
>
> I tried to stay away while things are being fleshed out but…
>
>> On Dec 4, 2014, at 16:15 , Alexandre Courbot <gnurou@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Wed, Dec 3, 2014 at 1:12 AM, Maxime Ripard
>> <maxime.ripard@free-electrons.com> wrote:
>>> On Tue, Dec 02, 2014 at 03:29:46PM +0100, Linus Walleij wrote:
>>>> On Tue, Dec 2, 2014 at 3:13 PM, Alexandre Courbot <gnurou@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> On Tue, Dec 2, 2014 at 1:36 AM, Maxime Ripard
>>>>> <maxime.ripard@free-electrons.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>> The only thing I'd like to have would be that the request here would
>>>>>> be non-exclusive, so that a later driver would still be allowed later
>>>>>> on to request that GPIO later on and manage it itself (ideally using
>>>>>> the usual gpiod_request function).
>>>>>
>>>>> Actually we have a plan (and I have some code too) to allow multiple
>>>>> consumers per GPIO. Although like Benoit I wonder why you would want
>>>>> to hog a GPIO and then request it properly later. Also, that probably
>>>>> means we should abandon the hog since it actively drives the line and
>>>>> would interfere with the late requested. How to do that correctly is
>>>>> not really clear to me.
>>>>
>>>> I don't get the usecase. A hogged GPIO is per definition hogged.
>>>> This sounds more like "initial settings" or something, which is another
>>>> usecase altogether.
>>>
>>> We do have one board where we have a pin (let's say GPIO14 of the bank
>>> A) that enables a regulator that will provide VCC the bank B.
>>>
>>> Now, both banks are handled by the same driver, but in order to have a
>>> working output on the bank B, we do need to set GPIO14 as soon as
>>> we're probed.
>>>
>>> Just relying on the usual deferred probing introduces a circular
>>> dependency between the gpio-regulator that needs to grab its GPIO from
>>> a driver not there yet, and the gpio driver that needs to enable its
>>> gpio-regulator.
>>
>> I don't get it. According to what you said, the following order should
>> go through IIUC:
>>
>> 1) bank A is probed, gpio 14 is available
>> 2) gpio-regulator is probed, acquires GPIO 14, regulator for Bank B is available
>> 3) bank B is probed, grabs its regulator and turn it on, probes.
>>
>> What am I missing?
>>
>>>
>>> GPIO hogging needs to be the ideal solution for that, since we can
>>> just enforce the GPIO14 value as the driver is probed, which provides
>>> the guarantee that any driver using the bank B will actually drive the
>>> GPIO it might use.
>>
>> At this point I start wondering if such initial setup should not be
>> the job of the bootloader? GPIO hogging ought to be simple and
>> definitive, adding the possibility to have it just as an initial value
>> would considerably complexify it. E.g. when is the gpio chip driver
>> supposed to release the hogged descriptor in such a case?
>>
>
> Do not count on the bootloader setting up anything. The trend is
> for the bootloader to setup the minimal environment to load your kernel
> and jump to it.
>
> http://www.denx.de/wiki/pub/U-Boot/MiniSummitELCE2013/2013-ELCE-U-Boot-Falcon-Boot.pdf

Just wondering. :)

But yeah, there are some use-cases (such as this one or
Linux-as-a-bootloader) for which this would not play nicely.

>
>
>> Note that if the multiple GPIO consumer feature we are planning goes
>> through, you should be able to use both hogging *and* a regulator on
>> the same GPIO and achieve what you want. The expectation of multiple
>> consumers is that the board designers know what they are doing, and
>> this case would certainly fit (chip hogs the line and doesn't touch
>> the value after that, letting the regulator control it without any
>> conflict afterwards), although it would of course be better to solve
>> the issue through regular probing...
>
>
> That’s why I was advocating a simple probing driver for all this.
> Figure out a way for this driver to be probed first would be an easier
> solution that what’s going on here.

Do you mean, a driver whose sole job is to probe other drivers in the
right order? :/