Re: [PATCH net-next v3 4/6] net: dsa: mv88e6xxx: simplify SERDES code for Topaz and Peridot

[Marek Behun <marek.behun@nic.cz>]

On Sun, 25 Aug 2019 12:02:32 -0400
Vivien Didelot <vivien.didelot@gmail.com> wrote:

> Aren't you relying on -ENODEV as well?

Vivien, I am not relying o -ENODEV. I changed the serdes_get_lane
semantics:
 - previously:
   - if port has a lane for current cmode, return given lane number
   - otherwise return -ENODEV
   - if other error occured during serdes_get_lane, return that error
     (this never happened, because all implementations only need port
     number and cmode, and cmode is cached, so no function was called
     that could err)
 - after this commit:
   - if port has a lane for current cmode, return 0 and put lane number
     into *lane
   - otherwise return 0 and put -1 into *lane
   - if error occured, return that error number

I removed the -ENODEV semantics for "no lane on port" event.
There are two reasons for this:
  1. once you requested lane number to be put into a place pointed to
     by a pointer, rather than the return value, the code seemed better
     to me (you may of course disagree, this is a personal opinion) when
     I did:
       if (err)
           return err;
       if (lane < 0)
           return 0;
     rather than
       if (err == -ENODEV)
           return 0;
       if (err)
           return err;
  2. some future implementation may actually need to call some MDIO
     read/write functions, which may or may not return -ENODEV. That
     could conflict with the -ENODEV returned when there is no lane.

Marek