Re: [PATCH] libfdt: place new nodes & properties after the parent's ones

[David Gibson <david@gibson.dropbear.id.au>]

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On Tue, Feb 11, 2020 at 02:29:22PM -0600, Rob Herring wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 10, 2020 at 5:44 PM David Gibson
> <david@gibson.dropbear.id.au> wrote:
> >
> > On Mon, Feb 10, 2020 at 12:40:19PM +0100, Marek Szyprowski wrote:
> > > Hi David,
> > >
> > > On 05.02.2020 06:45, David Gibson wrote:
> > > > On Tue, Feb 04, 2020 at 01:58:44PM +0100, Marek Szyprowski wrote:
> > > >> While applying dt-overlays using libfdt code, the order of the applied
> > > >> properties and sub-nodes is reversed. This should not be a problem in
> > > >> ideal world (mainline), but this matters for some vendor specific/custom
> > > >> dtb files. This can be easily fixed by the little change to libfdt code:
> > > >> any new properties and sub-nodes should be added after the parent's node
> > > >> properties and subnodes.
> > > >>
> > > >> Signed-off-by: Marek Szyprowski <m.szyprowski@samsung.com>
> > > > I'm not convinced this is a good idea.
> > > >
> > > > First, anything that relies on the order of properties or subnodes in
> > > > a dtb is deeply, fundamentally broken.  That can't even really be a
> > > > problem with a dtb file itself, only with the code processing it.
> > >
> > > I agree about the properties, but generally the order of nodes usually
> > > implies the order of creation of some devices or objects.
> >
> > Huh?  From the device tree client's point of view the devices just
> > exist - the order of creation should not be visible to it.
> 
> I'm not sure if downstream is different, but upstream this stems from
> Linux initcalls being processed in link order within a given level.
> It's much better than it used to be, but short of randomizing the
> ordering, I'm not sure we'll ever find and fix all these hidden
> dependencies.

Uhh... I don't really see how that relates to device tree encoding
order.  That's another source of non-stable device identifications,
which dtb order can also be, but they're not really connected beyond
that as far as I can tell.

> > > This sometimes
> > > has some side-effects.
> >
> > If those side effects matter, your code is broken.  If you need to
> > apply an order to nodes, you should be looking at 'reg' or other
> > properties.
> 
> The general preference is to sort by 'reg'. And we try to catch and
> reject any node re-ordering patches.
> 
> Rob
> 

-- 
David Gibson			| I'll have my music baroque, and my code
david AT gibson.dropbear.id.au	| minimalist, thank you.  NOT _the_ _other_
				| _way_ _around_!
http://www.ozlabs.org/~dgibson

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