Re: [lm-sensors] [PATCH] hwmon: (max6650) Rename the device ids to contain the hwmon suffix

[Lee Jones <lee.jones@linaro.org>]

> > > > > > Might be worth taking the opportunity to swap out these magic numbers
> > > > > > now.
> > > > > 
> > > > > There's nothing magic about them, they tell the driver how many fans
> > > > > each device supports. If you don't pass them as driver_data you'll have
> > > > > to derive them from the device name in the probe function.
> > > > 
> > > > They're magic in that they're not easily identifiable. In the few
> > > > moments that I looked at the patch I assumed they were device
> > > > IDs. They should be clearly defined.
> > > 
> > > They could have been device IDs, some drivers do that, and that would
> > > have been equally fine. driver_data can be anything. Best thing to do
> > > is to document it right above the device id array if you really find it
> > > confusing (I don't.) I don't know what else exactly you had in mind,
> > > but #defining FOUR_FANS as 4 and ONE_FAN as 1 and using that doesn't
> > > strike me as the best coding practice.
> > 
> > On the contrary. Perhaps the nomenclature can be worked on a little,
> > but if I saw the aforementioned defines I would have known instantly
> > what was being defined without searching for co-located comments. Thus
> > elevating the requirement for me to even mention it. Even when we
> > use the .data element for very simple information such as device IDs
> > we do so with a #define.
> 
> Right, you have a point here.
> 
> I suppose it was deemed unneeded for a ~750 lines driver nobody really
> cared about. But if the driver is becoming more complex and popular
> then indeed it makes sense to clean it up a little. Starting with
> reordering functions to kill forward declarations ^^

Another worthwhile endeavour. :)

-- 
Lee Jones
Linaro STMicroelectronics Landing Team Lead
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