The Ethernet driver use phy-handle to reference the PCS/PMA PHY. This could be a problem if one wants to configure an external PHY via phylink, since it use the same phandle to get the PHY. To fix this, introduce a dedicated pcs-handle to point to the PCS/PMA PHY and deprecate the use of pointing it with phy-handle. A similar use case of pcs-handle can be seen on dpaa2 as well. --- patch v5 --- - Re-applying the v4 patch on the net tree. - Describes the pcs-handle DT binding at ethernet-controller level. --- patch v6 --- - Remove "preferrably" to clearify usage of pcs_handle. Andy Chiu (4): net: axienet: setup mdio unconditionally net: axienet: factor out phy_node in struct axienet_local dt-bindings: net: add pcs-handle attribute net: axiemac: use a phandle to reference pcs_phy .../bindings/net/ethernet-controller.yaml | 6 ++++ .../bindings/net/xilinx_axienet.txt | 8 ++++- drivers/net/ethernet/xilinx/xilinx_axienet.h | 2 -- .../net/ethernet/xilinx/xilinx_axienet_main.c | 33 ++++++++++--------- 4 files changed, 31 insertions(+), 18 deletions(-) -- 2.34.1