Re: [PATCH] firmware: google: fix orphaned devices on partial populate failure

[Brian Norris <briannorris@chromium.org>]

On Tue, Apr 28, 2026 at 12:49:35PM -0700, Julius Werner wrote:
> > Given that, would the right approach be to continue the loop on
> > entry-specific errors ( logging a warning), while still aborting and
> > cleaning up on systemic ones like -ENOMEM? Or is the name collision
> > case considered impossible here since names are derived from the
> > tag/index and the table is only parsed once?
> 
> I don't think you should hardcode behavior so specific to what the
> called function does. Trying every entry doesn't really hurt even if
> they all fail due to some systemic problem, so if there's any chance
> that other entries might succeed, I think the best option is to just
> always continue the loop and try the next one.

FWIW, of_platform_populate() might be a (highly-used) analog for
comparison. Aside from some top-level errors (such as, "can't even find
the root to start from"), it doesn't actually return errors at all [1].
It just skips individual device failures (including -ENOMEM).

Seems like an OK strategy to me.

Brian

[1] of_platform_bus_create() technically has some recursion-carried
return codes, giving a chance to propagate a failure, but all the return
codes are still 0.