Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1754324Ab3H2QIf (ORCPT ); Thu, 29 Aug 2013 12:08:35 -0400 Received: from mail-pd0-f180.google.com ([209.85.192.180]:56016 "EHLO mail-pd0-f180.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1753938Ab3H2QId (ORCPT ); Thu, 29 Aug 2013 12:08:33 -0400 Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2013 09:08:30 -0700 From: Guenter Roeck To: Matthew Garrett Cc: Linus Walleij , Simon Guinot , "Rafael J. Wysocki" , Grant Likely , "linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org" , "linux-gpio@vger.kernel.org" , "H. Peter Anvin" Subject: Re: [PATCH v3] gpio: add GPIO support for F71882FG and F71889F Message-ID: <20130829160830.GB25021@roeck-us.net> References: <1374486633-9737-1-git-send-email-simon.guinot@sequanux.org> <20130801134632.GY9916@kw.sim.vm.gnt> <20130829125754.GA8813@srcf.ucam.org> <521F4F95.5080103@roeck-us.net> <20130829153738.GA16306@srcf.ucam.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20130829153738.GA16306@srcf.ucam.org> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15) Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1628 Lines: 33 On Thu, Aug 29, 2013 at 04:37:38PM +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote: > On Thu, Aug 29, 2013 at 06:41:41AM -0700, Guenter Roeck wrote: > > On 08/29/2013 05:57 AM, Matthew Garrett wrote: > > >If a vendor doesn't provide any way to autoprobe a device, there's no > > >way to autoprobe a device. That usually means that you're not expected > > >to use that device. > > > > > > > Pretty radical. Following your advice, should we remove all watchdog > > and hwmon drivers for all SuperIO chips out there, plus any existing > > gpio drivers (drivers/char/pc8736x_gpio.c might be a candidate) ? > > The majority of board vendors clearly don't expect the OS to drive the > hwmon chips - they're there for the benefit of ACPI and SMM code. That > doesn't mean that there's no benefit in having drivers for them, just > that the board vendors don't care about that use case and so won't do > anything to make it easier. > Actually, not entirely true. Some vendors even provide software running on Windows to access those chips (including access to fans controlled through GPIO pins) and to provide information to the user. It might be more accurate to say that some board vendors don't care about Linux (or about providing access through ACPI, for that matter). Question here is what the Linux kernel community's policy is going to be to handle such cases. Pragmatic or dogmatic ? Guenter -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/