Re: [PATCH v1 1/1] Revert "pinctrl: avoid unsafe code pattern in find_pinctrl()"

[Linus Walleij <linus.walleij@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Oct 17, 2023 at 4:18 PM Andy Shevchenko
<andriy.shevchenko@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> The commit breaks MMC enumeration on the Intel Merrifield
> plaform.

The enumeration works, just that the probe order is different, right?

> Before:
> [   36.439057] mmc0: SDHCI controller on PCI [0000:00:01.0] using ADMA
> [   36.450924] mmc2: SDHCI controller on PCI [0000:00:01.3] using ADMA
> [   36.459355] mmc1: SDHCI controller on PCI [0000:00:01.2] using ADMA
> [   36.706399] mmc0: new DDR MMC card at address 0001
> [   37.058972] mmc2: new ultra high speed DDR50 SDIO card at address 0001
> [   37.278977] mmcblk0: mmc0:0001 H4G1d 3.64 GiB
> [   37.297300]  mmcblk0: p1 p2 p3 p4 p5 p6 p7 p8 p9 p10
>
> After:
> [   36.436704] mmc2: SDHCI controller on PCI [0000:00:01.3] using ADMA
> [   36.436720] mmc1: SDHCI controller on PCI [0000:00:01.0] using ADMA
> [   36.463685] mmc0: SDHCI controller on PCI [0000:00:01.2] using ADMA
> [   36.720627] mmc1: new DDR MMC card at address 0001
> [   37.068181] mmc2: new ultra high speed DDR50 SDIO card at address 0001
> [   37.279998] mmcblk1: mmc1:0001 H4G1d 3.64 GiB
> [   37.302670]  mmcblk1: p1 p2 p3 p4 p5 p6 p7 p8 p9 p10
>
> This reverts commit c153a4edff6ab01370fcac8e46f9c89cca1060c2.
>
> Signed-off-by: Andy Shevchenko <andriy.shevchenko@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Relying on this probe order or whatever it is causing one or the other
to be enumerated first seems very fragile, I think this condition can be
caused by other much more random things in the probe path as well,
so it would be great if we could just hammer this down for good, as
it is apparently ABI.

In the past some file system developers have told us (Ulf will know)
that we can't rely on the block device enumeration to identify
devices, and requires that we use things such as sysfs or the
UUID volume label in ext4 to identify storage.

That said, device trees are full of stuff like this:

        aliases {
                serial0 = &uart_AO;
                mmc0 = &sd_card_slot;
                mmc1 = &sdhc;
        };

Notice how this enumeration gets defined by the aliases.

Can you do the same with device properties? (If anyone can
answer that question it's Dmitry!)

Yours,
Linus Walleij