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Date:   Wed, 9 Dec 2020 14:28:18 -0600
From:   Bjorn Andersson <bjorn.andersson@linaro.org>
To:     Thierry Reding <thierry.reding@gmail.com>,
        Sam Ravnborg <sam@ravnborg.org>,
        Maarten Lankhorst <maarten.lankhorst@linux.intel.com>,
        Maxime Ripard <mripard@kernel.org>,
        Thomas Zimmermann <tzimmermann@suse.de>,
        David Airlie <airlied@linux.ie>,
        dri-devel@lists.freedesktop.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH] drm/panel: Make backlight attachment lazy
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On Tue 08 Dec 17:52 CST 2020, Daniel Vetter wrote:

> On Tue, Dec 08, 2020 at 04:02:16PM -0600, Bjorn Andersson wrote:
> > On Tue 08 Dec 06:47 CST 2020, Thierry Reding wrote:
> > 
> > > On Mon, Dec 07, 2020 at 10:44:46PM -0600, Bjorn Andersson wrote:
> > > > Some bridge chips, such as the TI SN65DSI86 DSI/eDP bridge, provides
> > > > means of generating a PWM signal for backlight control of the attached
> > > > panel. The provided PWM chip is typically controlled by the
> > > > pwm-backlight driver, which if tied to the panel will provide DPMS.
> > > > 
> > > > But with the current implementation the panel will refuse to probe
> > > > because the bridge driver has yet to probe and register the PWM chip,
> > > > and the bridge driver will refuse to probe because it's unable to find
> > > > the panel.
> > > 
> > > What you're describing is basically a circular dependency. Can't we get
> > > rid of that in some other way? Why exactly does the bridge driver refuse
> > > to probe if the panel can't be found?
> > > 
> > > In other words, I see how the bridge would /use/ the panel in that it
> > > forward a video stream to it. But how does the panel /use/ the bridge?
> > > 
> > 
> > Yes, this is indeed a circular dependency between the components.
> > 
> > The involved parts are:
> > * the bridge driver that implements the PWM chip probe defers on
> >   drm_of_find_panel_or_bridge() failing to find the panel.
> > * the pwm-backlight driver that consumes the PWM channel probe defer
> >   because the pwm_chip was not registered by the bridge.
> > * the panel that uses the backlight for DPMS purposes probe defer
> >   because drm_panel_of_backlight() fails to find the pwm-backlight.
> > 
> > I looked at means of postponing drm_of_find_panel_or_bridge() to
> > drm_bridge_funcs->attach(), but at that time "deferral" would be fatal.
> > I looked at registering the pwm_chip earlier, but that would depend on a
> > guarantee of the pwm-backlight and panel driver to probe concurrently.
> > And the current solution of not tying the backlight to the panel means
> > that when userspace decides to DPMS the display the backlight stays on.
> > 
> > 
> > The proposed solution (hack?) means that DPMS operations happening
> > before the pwm-backlight has probed will be missed, so it's not perfect.
> > It does however allow the backlight on my laptop to turn off, which is a
> > big improvement.
> > 
> > But I'm certainly welcome to suggestions.
> 
> Entirely hand-waving, why doesn't the following work:
> 
> 1. driver for the platform device which is the bridge loads
> 2. that platform driver registers the pwm
> 3. it registers some magic for later on (more below)
> 4. panel driver has deferred loading until step 2 happened
> 5. panel driver registers drm_panel
> 6. the magic from step 3 picks up (after having been deferred for a few
> times probably) grabs the panel, and sets up the actual drm_bridge driver
> 
> Everyone happy, or not? From the description it looks like the problem
> that the pwm that we need for the backlight is tied to the same driver as
> the drm_bridge, and always torn down too if the drm_bridge setup fails
> somehow for a reason. And that reason is the circular dependency this
> creates.
> 
> Now for the magic in step 3, there's options:
> - change DT to split out that pwm as a separate platform_device, that way
>   bridge and panel can load indepedently (hopefully)
> 

This is an i2c device, so describing it multiple times would mean we
have multiple devices with the same address...

> - convert bridge to a multi-function device (mfd), essentially a way to
>   instantiate more devices with their drivers at runtime. Then the actual
>   pwm and drm_bridge parts of your bridge driver bind against those
>   sub-functions, and can defer indepedently
> 

But, this sounds reasonable and would rely on the existing probe
deferral logic and if there's ever any improvements in this area we
would directly benefit from it.

> - we could create a callback/wait function for "pls wait for any panel to
>   show up". Then your bridge driver could launch a work_struct with that
>   wait function, which will do the bridge setup once the panel has shown
>   up. The pwm will be registered right away. It's essentially hand-rolling
>   EPROBE_DEFERRED for work_struct in drm/panel. Maybe we might even have
>   that exported from the driver core, e.g.
> 
> register_bridge_fn(struct work *)
> {
> 	do_wait_probe_defer();
> 	panel = drm_of_find_panel_or_bridge();
> 	if (!panel) {
> 		schedule_work(); /* want to restart the work so it can be stopped on driver unload */
> 		return;
> 	}
> 
> 	/* we have the panel now, register drm_bridge */
> }
> 
> - cobble something together with component.c, but that's more for
>   collecting unrelated struct device into a logical one than splitting it
>   up more.
> 
> tldr; I think you can split this loop here at the bridge by untangling the
> pwm from the drm_bridge part sufficiently.

Yes, it seems like a reasonable path forward. But I wanted some input
before refactoring the whole thing.

Thank you,
Bjorn