Hi guys, To continue the discussion started by Dmitry [1], this is my proposal that I mentioned in my last mail. In short, the idea is that instead of trying to extend the support for the currently used struct property_set, I'm proposing that we introduce a completely new, independent type of fwnode, and replace the struct property_set with it. I'm calling the type "software node" here. The reason for a complete separation of the software nodes from the generic property handling code is the need to be able to create the nodes independently from the devices that they are bind to. The way this works is that every node that is created will have a kobject registered. That will take care the ref counting for us, and also allow us to for example display the properties in sysfs. There are a few more details in patch 3/5 about the software nodes in the commit message. [1] https://lkml.org/lkml/2018/9/17/1067 -- heikki Heikki Krogerus (5): drivers core: Prepare support for multiple platform notifications ACPI / glue: Add acpi_platform_notify() function drivers: base: Introducing software nodes to the firmware node framework device property: Move device_add_properties() to swnode.c device property: Remove struct property_set .../ABI/testing/sysfs-devices-software_node | 27 + drivers/acpi/bus.c | 1 - drivers/acpi/glue.c | 21 +- drivers/acpi/internal.h | 1 - drivers/base/Makefile | 2 +- drivers/base/core.c | 32 +- drivers/base/property.c | 529 +----------- drivers/base/swnode.c | 812 ++++++++++++++++++ include/linux/acpi.h | 10 + include/linux/property.h | 12 + 10 files changed, 929 insertions(+), 518 deletions(-) create mode 100644 Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-devices-software_node create mode 100644 drivers/base/swnode.c -- 2.19.1
