Re: [PATCH] pinctrl: baytrail: show output gpio state correctly on Intel Baytrail

[Mika Westerberg <mika.westerberg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Nov 03, 2014 at 09:50:11AM -0600, Felipe Balbi wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Mon, Nov 03, 2014 at 05:42:07PM +0200, Mika Westerberg wrote:
> > On Mon, Nov 03, 2014 at 05:27:43PM +0200, Mika Westerberg wrote:
> > > On Mon, Nov 03, 2014 at 09:00:48AM -0600, Felipe Balbi wrote:
> > > > On Mon, Nov 03, 2014 at 11:24:02AM +0200, Mika Westerberg wrote:
> > > > > On Fri, Oct 31, 2014 at 11:45:09AM -0700, David Cohen wrote:
> > > > > > > I think adding the module exit + allowing this driver to be a module
> > > > > > > would be a good approach. Then we don't need to force generic x86 kernel
> > > > > > > binaries to always have this driver. Unless Mathias or Mika knows a
> > > > > > > constraint to force this driver to be builtin only.
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > It helps if I CC them when asking for feedback :)
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > Mathias, Mika, do you know any constraint that forces pinctrl-baytrail
> > > > > > to be bool?
> > > > > 
> > > > > The only constraint that has been keeping this driver as bool is that
> > > > > some machines like, Asus T100, uses ACPI GPIO operation regions for
> > > > > toggling GPIOs to get things like sensor hub powered on. The GPIO
> > > > > operation region code does not yet handle -EPROBE_DEFER so only way to
> > > > > ensure that the operation region is there is to have the driver compiled
> > > > > in to the kernel.
> > > > 
> > > > But that's not enough excuse to have every single x86 in the market
> > > > shipping with this driver. Think about a distro kernel, most likely this
> > > > gets enabled and it's wrong in 80% of the cases.
> > > 
> > > True, but see below.
> > > 
> > > > It would be nicer to add EPROBE_DEFER support, convert this into
> > > > tristate and have default = M if BAYTRAIL, or something.
> > > 
> > > If it were simple as that we would have done that already. Please check
> > > drivers/gpio/gpiolib-acpi.c:acpi_gpio_adr_space_handler() and tell me
> > > how we can do that.
> > 
> > Actually the above is not the problem because we already have registered
> > the GPIO chip and hence we have the GPIO available to the firmware code.
> 
> what happens before you registered the gpio chip ? It takes some time
> from head.S to gpiochip_irqchip_add(). Anywhere between that time,
> firmware could try to access gpios and the same problem would occur.

The operation region is not ready and the firmware does not try to use
it. However, the subsys_initcall() is there just to be sure that the
GPIO driver gets loaded before anything that is going to use GPIOs from
firmware.

> > The real problem is that if the ACPI GPIO operation handler is not there
> > at the time firmware decides to do something it will just skip things
> > that depend on the operation region. So if it has a GPIO that is used to
> > turn on sensor hub or touch panel or whatever, this will not be done and
> > it results that the device in question might not work properly.
> 
> that's an issue that needs solving, but forcing every x86 kernel to ship
> with this driver, is not a proper solution.

I would rather have the driver build in to the kernel now (and btw it
has been already in mainline quite some time so I suspect many distros
have already enabled it), than turning it module and render some devices
that have been working previously, fail suddenly.

There is a mechanism in ACPI to solve these issues, called _DEP, but it
is still very much work in progress.
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