Re: [PATCH v3 3/7] rust: property: Introduce PropertyGuard

Remo Senekowitsch
2025-04-26T11:08:53Z

On Sat Apr 26, 2025 at 12:15 PM CEST, Danilo Krummrich wrote:
> On Sat, Apr 26, 2025 at 08:19:09AM +0200, Dirk Behme wrote:
>> On 25.04.25 17:35, Danilo Krummrich wrote:
>> > On Fri, Apr 25, 2025 at 05:01:26PM +0200, Remo Senekowitsch wrote:
>> >> This abstraction is a way to force users to specify whether a property
>> >> is supposed to be required or not. This allows us to move error
>> >> logging of missing required properties into core, preventing a lot of
>> >> boilerplate in drivers.
>> >>
>> >> It will be used by upcoming methods for reading device properties.
>> >>
>> >> Signed-off-by: Remo Senekowitsch <remo@buenzli.dev>
>> >> ---
>> >> rust/kernel/device/property.rs | 57 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>> >> 1 file changed, 57 insertions(+)
>> >>
>> >> diff --git a/rust/kernel/device/property.rs b/rust/kernel/device/property.rs
>> >> index 28850aa3b..de31a1f56 100644
>> >> --- a/rust/kernel/device/property.rs
>> >> +++ b/rust/kernel/device/property.rs
>> >> @@ -146,3 +146,60 @@ unsafe fn dec_ref(obj: ptr::NonNull<Self>) {
>> >> unsafe { bindings::fwnode_handle_put(obj.cast().as_ptr()) }
>> >> }
>> >> }
>> >> +
>> >> +/// A helper for reading device properties.
>> >> +///
>> >> +/// Use [`Self::required`] if a missing property is considered a bug and
>> >> +/// [`Self::optional`] otherwise.
>> >> +///
>> >> +/// For convenience, [`Self::or`] and [`Self::or_default`] are provided.
>> >> +pub struct PropertyGuard<'fwnode, 'name, T> {
>> >> + /// The result of reading the property.
>> >> + inner: Result<T>,
>> >> + /// The fwnode of the property, used for logging in the "required" case.
>> >> + fwnode: &'fwnode FwNode,
>> >> + /// The name of the property, used for logging in the "required" case.
>> >> + name: &'name CStr,
>> >> +}
>> >> +
>> >> +impl<T> PropertyGuard<'_, '_, T> {
>> >> + /// Access the property, indicating it is required.
>> >> + ///
>> >> + /// If the property is not present, the error is automatically logged. If a
>> >> + /// missing property is not an error, use [`Self::optional`] instead.
>> >> + pub fn required(self) -> Result<T> {
>> >> + if self.inner.is_err() {
>> >> + pr_err!(
>> >> + "{}: property '{}' is missing\n",
>> >> + self.fwnode.display_path(),
>> >> + self.name
>> >> + );
>> >
>> > Hm, we can't use the device pointer of the fwnode_handle, since it is not
>> > guaranteed to be valid, hence the pr_*() print...
>> >
>> > Anyways, I'm not sure we need to print here at all. If a driver wants to print
>> > that it is unhappy about a missing required property it can do so by itself, I
>> > think.
>>
>> Hmm, the driver said by using 'required' that it *is* required. So a
>> missing property is definitely an error here. Else it would have used
>> 'optional'. Which doesn't print in case the property is missing.
>>
>> If I remember correctly having 'required' and 'optional' is the result
>> of some discussion on Zulip. And one conclusion of that discussion was
>> to move checking & printing the error out of the individual drivers
>> into a central place to avoid this error checking & printing in each
>> and every driver. I think the idea is that the drivers just have to do
>> ...required()?; and that's it, then.
>
> Yes, I get the idea.
>
> If it'd be possible to use dev_err!() instead I wouldn't object in this specific
> case. But this code is used by drivers from probe(), hence printing the error
> without saying for which device it did occur is a bit pointless.
>
> Drivers can still decide to properly print the error if the returned Result
> indicates one.

One alternative would be to store a reference count to the device in
`FwNode`. At that point we'd be guaranteed to have a valid reference
whenever we want to log something.