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Message-ID: <3d5e41f6-16a8-4298-ccd3-6db60f94eb47@ti.com>
Date:   Fri, 18 Nov 2022 15:08:23 -0600
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Subject: Re: [PATCH v3 4/4] arm64: dts: ti: Add support for J784S4 EVM board
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To:     Nishanth Menon <nm@ti.com>
CC:     Apurva Nandan <a-nandan@ti.com>,
        Vignesh Raghavendra <vigneshr@ti.com>,
        Tero Kristo <kristo@kernel.org>,
        Rob Herring <robh+dt@kernel.org>,
        Krzysztof Kozlowski <krzysztof.kozlowski+dt@linaro.org>,
        Linus Walleij <linus.walleij@linaro.org>,
        <linux-arm-kernel@lists.infradead.org>,
        <devicetree@vger.kernel.org>, <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
        <linux-gpio@vger.kernel.org>, Hari Nagalla <hnagalla@ti.com>
References: <20221116130428.161329-1-a-nandan@ti.com>
 <20221116130428.161329-5-a-nandan@ti.com>
 <b57433e7-b309-bd1c-f794-3da74021f03c@ti.com>
 <20221118174754.y37pq77drvla2uxj@tinderbox>
 <8c123fa2-caab-d2dd-5eb4-688f1c6abb33@ti.com>
 <20221118180808.wnel7d6gswsnooww@junkman>
 <93242211-95e7-09a0-fced-5ef2deb9fc08@ti.com>
 <20221118192744.wish2vrxgy7dg7c2@unnerving>
From:   Andrew Davis <afd@ti.com>
In-Reply-To: <20221118192744.wish2vrxgy7dg7c2@unnerving>
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On 11/18/22 1:27 PM, Nishanth Menon wrote:
> On 12:15-20221118, Andrew Davis wrote:
>> I don't see either of those addressed in that thread, only that
>> the aliases should go in the .dts files and be trimmed, nothing
> 
> Key is trimmed to what the system and ecosystem needs.
> 
>> stops us from:
>>
>> chosen {
>> 	stdout-path = "serial10:115200n8";
>> };
>>
>> aliases {
>> 	serial10 = &main_uart8;
>> };
> 
> Do we need 10 serial aliases? There are'nt 10 serial ports exposed in
> j782s2. ok - lets say we do this, then: [1] is needed to boot? but why
> do we need to do that for all armv8 platforms when aliases allows us

Why do we need SERIAL_8250_NR_UARTS at all, might be a better question.
These should be dynamically allocated if the number goes over the
default count imposed by the TTY framework. Maybe folks are still a
bit too afraid to touch the TTY subsystem core, I don't blame them..

> to trim it to just the 3 or 4 serial ports the platform really needs
> That + being able to use the convention that serial2 is always linux
> console, is'nt that a good thing? Hence recommending to just expose the
> serialports as aliases to exactly what we need while keeping serial2 as
> the linux console (which in this case happens to be main_uart8 - example
> as j721s2 does).
> 

"serial2 as the linux console" is *not* a convention, we just don't want to
fix up our bootloader/userspace to actually reason about what serial ports to
put logins on. Why not make ttyS10 the default, or ttyS666, it doesn't solve
your multi-distro issue either way since they usually only start a login on
ttyS0, console=, and/or the first virtual tty. Never on ttyS2. So you are
hacking up DT for a solution that doesn't do what you want in the end.

Andrew

> [1] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/3ab9addf-7938-fcf3-6147-15a998e37d2d@ti.com/
>