From: Laurent Pinchart <laurent.pinchart@ideasonboard.com>
To: Magnus Damm <magnus.damm@gmail.com>
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-sh@vger.kernel.org,
        linus.walleij@linaro.org, grant.likely@secretlab.ca,
        horms@verge.net.au
Subject: Re: [PATCH 00/03] gpio: Renesas R-Car GPIO driver update
Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2013 14:13:52 +0100
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Hi Magnus,

On Thursday 14 March 2013 13:23:46 Magnus Damm wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 13, 2013 at 9:58 PM, Laurent Pinchart wrote:
> > On Wednesday 13 March 2013 20:32:03 Magnus Damm wrote:
> >> gpio: Renesas R-Car GPIO driver update
> >> 
> >> [PATCH 01/03] gpio: Renesas R-Car GPIO driver V2
> >> [PATCH 02/03] gpio: rcar: Use IRQCHIP_SET_TYPE_MASKED
> >> [PATCH 03/03] gpio: rcar: Make use of devm functions
> >> 
> >> This series updates the R-Car GPIO driver with various
> >> changes kindly suggested by Laurent Pinchart.
> >> 
> >> Patch [01/03] is a drop in replacement for V1 of the R-Car
> >> GPIO driver. The flag in patch [02/03] is kept out of [01/03]
> >> to avoid changing the behaviour of the driver between V1 and V2.
> >> Also, devm support in [03/03] is kept out of [01/03] to make
> >> sure back porting goes as smooth as possible.
> > 
> > As I mentioned in a previous e-mail, all the devm_* functions used in
> > 03/03 have been available since 2.6.30. Do you really need to port that
> > driver to older kernels ?
> 
> Well, it was earlier suggested to me that not using devm to begin with
> is a safe way forward for back porting. Also, as the individual patch
> shows, we save about 10 lines of code but add many more complex
> dependencies.
> 
> Simon, do you have any recommendation how for us regarding devm and
> back porting?
> 
> > Regarding 02/03, do you plan to squash it with 01/03 for the mainline
> > submission ?
> 
> Not unless someone puts a gun to my head. =) Of course, if a single
> patch is really required then I will follow that, but I can't really
> see why when we have a nice versioning control system that can help
> our development in various ways.
> 
> What is the reason behind you wanting to merge these patches?
> 
> From my point of view, if any incremental patch was a bug fix then i
> would of course request to fold it in, but in this case these are
> feature patches that would be beneficial to keep as individual
> commits. Keeping them separate allows us to bisect and also makes
> partial back porting easier if needed.

When submitting new drivers I usually try not to make the development history 
visible to mainline. It brings little additional value (beside possibly making 
backporting a bit easier, but in the devm_* case that shouldn't be a problem, 
unless Simon thinks otherwise) but adds review complexity, as reviewers need 
to validate the intermediate versions as well. More patches also mean more 
potential bisection breakages.

In this case (assuming there would be no backporting issue) there's no need 
for mainline to see that we started with a version that didn't use devm_* and 
then modified the code. I see no added value in that.

-- 
Regards,

Laurent Pinchart

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