Re: [PATCH v3 2/3] OF: Introduce DT overlay support.

[Grant Likely <grant.likely@secretlab.ca>]

On Thu, 14 Nov 2013 11:01:35 +0100, Pantelis Antoniou <panto@antoniou-consulting.com> wrote:
> On Nov 14, 2013, at 2:31 AM, Grant Likely wrote:
> > On Tue, 12 Nov 2013 10:30:37 +0100, Pantelis Antoniou <panto@antoniou-consulting.com> wrote:
> >> On Nov 11, 2013, at 7:42 PM, Grant Likely wrote:
> >>> On Fri,  8 Nov 2013 17:06:09 +0200, Pantelis Antoniou <panto@antoniou-consulting.com> wrote:
> >> I'm of the opinion that 'platform_device' shouldn't exist at all btw :)
> >> Most of it's functionality can pretty easily be subsumed by device proper
> >> and the world would be a better place :)
> > 
> > I'm fine for merging some/all of the platform_device fields into struct
> > device. There are a few things, like resources, which would probably be
> > useful to have common on all struct device variants. However,
> > platform_device is far more about matching drivers to devices. Even if
> > all of platform_device went into struct device, there would still need
> > to be the platform_bus_type as the collection point for the device
> > drivers.
> > 
> 
> We don't really need the resources structures on OF. That information is
> present in OF format, which we can use to generate transient resources for
> usage with the standard kernel interfaces.
> 
> BTW, last time I checked resource handling was broken on release.
> There are a few patches I sent out fixing it but they were probably ignored.

Please send them again. They probably got lost.

> >>> Can overlays interact in bad ways? If overlay 1 is installed before
> >>> overlay 2, what happens if overlay 1 is removed?
> >>> 
> >> 
> >> Yes, they can. It is not something easily fixed; the proper way would
> >> be to calculate overlay intersection points and refuse to unload.
> > 
> > I think this is important. If it cannot be solved immediately, then the
> > kernel should enforce overlays always get removed in the reverse order
> > that they were added. There may be use-cases that don't like it, but it
> > is safe.
> 
> OK, that makes sense.
> 
> We are not talking about a global overlay stack though, we're talking about
> an overlay stack for overlays that overlap.

I'm actually talking about a global overlay stack. Otherwise you've
still got the ever-increasing-phandles problem again.

Cheers,
g.