Re: [PATCH] pwm-backlight: add regulator and GPIO support

Sascha Hauer
2012-07-05T08:02:46Z

On Thu, Jul 05, 2012 at 04:43:27PM +0900, Alex Courbot wrote:
> On 07/05/2012 03:47 PM, Sascha Hauer wrote:
> >>I thought about just checking if devm_get_regulator returned -ENODEV
> >>and happily continue if that was the case, assuming no regulator was
> >>declared.
> >
> >And that's the problem. The get_regulator won't return -ENODEV. It will
> >return -EPROBE_DEFER which tells you nothing about whether a regulator
> >will ever be available or not.
> >
> >Having a flag in platform data would be fine with me, but I know other
> >people think differently.
> >
> >BTW in devicetree this flag implicitely exists with the power-supply
> >property.
>
> One could actually question whether the whole regulator/gpio thing
> should be supported at all with platform data. The platform
> interface can use the function hooks in order to implement whatever
> behavior it wants when the light needs to be powered on and off. The
> reason for introducing optional regulator/gpio parameters is because
> the DT cannot use these. Since I have no plan to remove these
> function hooks, making the regulator/gpio option available in
> platform data might be redundant. Any thought about this?

sounds good.

>
> >Right now the regulator core will just return -EPROBE_DEFER in both
> >cases. This could easily be changed in the regulator core.
>
> Could this be because the regulator core cannot make the difference
> between a not-yet-available regulator and a missing one?

It could. In regulator_dev_lookup we have:

if (node) {
...
} else {
/*
* If we couldn't even get the node then it's
* not just that the device didn't register
* yet, there's no node and we'll never
* succeed.
*/
*ret = -ENODEV;
}

So here the regulator core knows that there is no regulator and never
will be. All that needs to be done is to make _regulator_get look at
that value.
There may be some side effects if we just return ERR_PTR(-ENODEV) when
regulator_dev_lookup returns -ENODEV. Maybe Mark has some comments to
this.

Sascha

--
Pengutronix e.K. | |
Industrial Linux Solutions | http://www.pengutronix.de/ |
Peiner Str. 6-8, 31137 Hildesheim, Germany | Phone: +49-5121-206917-0 |
Amtsgericht Hildesheim, HRA 2686 | Fax: +49-5121-206917-5555 |