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From:   Arnd Bergmann <arnd@kernel.org>
Date:   Wed, 9 Dec 2020 21:38:22 +0100
Message-ID: <CAK8P3a30=AcEZAZ2yNUgctj=4YM6FhS1ZXB4ts7a7WV=gBcatA@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Howto listen to/handle gpio state changes ? Re: [PATCH v2 2/2]
 drivers: gpio: add virtio-gpio guest driver
To:     Grygorii Strashko <grygorii.strashko@ti.com>
Cc:     Linus Walleij <linus.walleij@linaro.org>,
        "Enrico Weigelt, metux IT consult" <lkml@metux.net>,
        "Michael S. Tsirkin" <mst@redhat.com>,
        Jason Wang <jasowang@redhat.com>,
        Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>,
        Linux Doc Mailing List <linux-doc@vger.kernel.org>,
        "linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org" <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
        virtualization@lists.linux-foundation.org,
        Bartosz Golaszewski <bgolaszewski@baylibre.com>,
        "open list:GPIO SUBSYSTEM" <linux-gpio@vger.kernel.org>,
        linux-riscv <linux-riscv@lists.infradead.org>,
        "Enrico Weigelt, metux IT consult" <info@metux.net>
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On Wed, Dec 9, 2020 at 9:22 PM Grygorii Strashko
<grygorii.strashko@ti.com> wrote:
> On 09/12/2020 14:53, Linus Walleij wrote:
> > On Wed, Dec 9, 2020 at 12:19 PM Arnd Bergmann <arnd@kernel.org> wrote:
> >> On Wed, Dec 9, 2020 at 9:51 AM Linus Walleij <linus.walleij@linaro.org> wrote:
> >>> On Tue, Dec 8, 2020 at 3:07 PM Enrico Weigelt, metux IT consult <lkml@metux.net> wrote:
> >>
> >>> What we need to understand is if your new usecase is an outlier
> >>> so it is simplest modeled by a "mock" irq_chip or we have to design
> >>> something new altogether like notifications on changes. I suspect
> >>> irq_chip would be best because all drivers using GPIOs for interrupts
> >>> are expecting interrupts, and it would be an enormous task to
> >>> change them all and really annoying to create a new mechanism
> >>> on the side.
> >>
> >> I would expect the platform abstraction to actually be close enough
> >> to a chained irqchip that it actually works: the notification should
> >> come in via vring_interrupt(), which is a normal interrupt handler
> >> that calls vq->vq.callback(), calling generic_handle_irq() (and
> >> possibly chained_irq_enter()/chained_irq_exit() around it) like the
> >> other gpio drivers do should just work here I think, and if it did
> >> not, then I would expect this to be just a bug in the driver rather
> >> than something missing in the gpio framework.
> >
> > Performance/latency-wise that would also be strongly encouraged.
> >
> > Tglx isn't super-happy about the chained interrupts at times, as they
> > can create really nasty bugs, but a pure IRQ in fastpath of some
> > kinde is preferable and intuitive either way.
>
> In my opinion the problem here is that proposed patch somehow describes Front end, but
> says nothing about Backend and overall design.
>
> What is expected to be virtualized? whole GPIO chip? or set of GPIOs from different GPIO chips?
> Most often nobody want to give Guest access to the whole GPIO chip, so, most probably, smth. similar to
> GPIO Aggregator will be needed.

I would argue that it does not matter, the virtual GPIO chip could really
be anything. Certain functions such as a gpio based keyboard require
interrupts, so it sounds useful to make them work.

     Arnd