Re: how to allow board writers to customize driver behavior (watchdog here)

["Mike Frysinger" <vapier.adi@gmail.com>]

On 5/24/07, Paul Mundt <lethal@linux-sh.org> wrote:
> On Thu, May 24, 2007 at 12:21:47AM -0400, Mike Frysinger wrote:
> > is this completely bad mojo ?  is there some other mechanism that
> > provides what i want and i just dont know about it ?  or do i just
> > make people change the driver to fit their application, thus throwing
> > out the idea of keeping all board-specific details in just the boards
> > file ...
>
> It sounds like your constraining your driver based on terminology.
> Watchdogs on most embedded platforms support either a 'reset' mode or
> otherwise act as periodic timers, trying to push both of these
> functionalities in to a watchdog driver is rather pointless.
> CONFIG_WATCHDOG implies 'reset' mode by definition.

my constraint was trying to keep all of the code that deals with the
watchdog in one file ... those were the blinders i had on from the get
go so the idea of having different drivers that work with the watchdog
hardware hadnt even occurred to me

> If you wish to use your watchdog timer as a periodic timer, simply have a
> clocksource/clockevents established for it, leave the watchdog driver as
> a reset-only thing, and let the user decide which one they want either
> via Kconfig or the kernel command line. (The watchdog driver can just
> -ENODEV or -EBUSY if the clocksource is active).

hmm, i'll poke the clocksource/clockevents stuff as well as the
notifier idea from Alan

thanks
-mike