Re: [PATCH 2/3] ARM: sunxi: Add an ahci-platform compatible AHCI driver for the Allwinner SUNXi series of SoCs

[Oliver Schinagl <oliver@schinagl.nl>]

On 06-12-13 10:01, Thomas Petazzoni wrote:
> Dear Tejun Heo,
>
> On Wed, 4 Dec 2013 08:23:12 -0500, Tejun Heo wrote:
>
>>> But again, point me (for dummies ;) in the right direction and I'll
>>> work on it with some help.
>> Richard and Shawn recently worked on ahci_imx.  Can you guys please
>> talk with each other and figure out what can be done to share as much
>> as possible among these new platform-specific drivers?  I'd really
>> like to see the common things factored out as much as possible with
>> only the actual hardware differences described for each device.
> Also, please Cc me on such discussions. I have a pending AHCI platform
> driver for another ARM SoC family. It is very similar to ahci_platform,
> but needs to do a few more things that are SoC specific (map an
> additional register area, and do some SoC-specific stuff with them).
>
> For the moment, we're left with two approaches:
>
>   * Do what Oliver did, where the ahci_<foo> driver will do its own
>     SoC-specific stuff, and then will register an additional
>     platform_device to trigger the ->probe() of the generic
>     ahci_platform driver. I must say I don't really like this solution,
>     since it involves having two platform_device registered for the same
>     piece of hardware (one platform_device to trigger the ->probe of
>     ahci_<foo>, and another one to trigger the ->probe of ahci_platform).
>
>   * Duplicate in ahci_<foo> the (relatively small) amount of code that
>     is present in ahci_platform.
>
>  From my point of view, ahci_platform should be turned into a small
> "library", that provides an API for ahci_<foo> drivers to 1/ do their
> own custom stuff and 2/ do the common ahci_platform stuff.
>
> This way we avoid the registration of two platform_device for the same
> piece of hardware, and we avoid the duplication of code.
>
> Want me to propose a RFC for this idea?
I've started to do what sdhci does with their pltfrm driver, assuming 
that's the right approach. Since i'm only dabbling and not always 100% 
sure what should or shouldn't be done, it may take a little while, but 
looks promising from my end ;)

So is the sdhci-pltfrm approach the correct one? We still have ahci_* 
drivers, but ahci_platform.c won't be a driver in the sense that it is 
now anymore.

Oliver
>
> Best regards,
>
> Thomas