Date: Wed, 13 May 2015 11:17:36 -0700
From: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
To: Maxime Ripard <maxime.ripard@free-electrons.com>
Cc: Mark Brown <broonie@kernel.org>, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
        Hans de Goede <hdegoede@redhat.com>, linux-spi@vger.kernel.org,
        Martin Sperl <kernel@martin.sperl.org>,
        Michal Suchanek <hramrach@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] spi: Force the registration of the spidev devices
Message-ID: <20150513181736.GC16811@kroah.com>
References: <1431462804-30467-1-git-send-email-maxime.ripard@free-electrons.com>
 <20150513112604.GI3066@sirena.org.uk>
 <20150513153740.GC11677@kroah.com>
 <20150513175034.GC4004@lukather>
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On Wed, May 13, 2015 at 07:50:34PM +0200, Maxime Ripard wrote:
> Hi Greg,
> 
> On Wed, May 13, 2015 at 08:37:40AM -0700, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
> > On Wed, May 13, 2015 at 12:26:04PM +0100, Mark Brown wrote:
> > > On Tue, May 12, 2015 at 10:33:24PM +0200, Maxime Ripard wrote:
> > > 
> > > > While this is nicer than the DT solution because of its accurate hardware
> > > > representation, it's still not perfect because you might not have access to the
> > > > DT, or you might be driving a completely generic device (such as a
> > > > microcontroller) that might be used for something else in a different
> > > > context/board.
> > > 
> > > Greg, you're copied on this because this seems to be a generic problem
> > > that should perhaps be solved at a driver model level - having a way to
> > > bind userspace access to devices that we don't otherwise have a driver
> > > for.  The subsystem could specify the UIO driver to use when no other
> > > driver is available.
> > 
> > That doesn't really work.  I've been talking to the ACPI people about
> > this, and the problem is "don't otherwise have a driver for" is an
> > impossible thing to prove, as you never know when a driver is going to
> > be loaded from userspace.
> > 
> > You can easily bind drivers to devices today from userspace, why not
> > just use the built-in functionality you have today if you "know" that
> > there is no driver for this hardware.
> 
> What we're really after here is that we want to have an spidev
> instance when we don't even have a device.

That's crazy, just create a device, things do not work without one.

> And since SPI isn't really doing any kind of hotplug, the only
> situation that might be problematic is if we have the DT overlays
> registering new devices.

I have no idea what this all is, sorry, patches would be good if you
want to get your idea across.  Maybe it was sent early in this thread,
but I can't seem to find one...

greg k-h
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