Re: [PATCH v3] gpio: add GPIO support for F71882FG and F71889F

[Simon Guinot]

On Thu, Aug 29, 2013 at 05:25:51PM +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 29, 2013 at 09:08:30AM -0700, Guenter Roeck wrote:
> > On Thu, Aug 29, 2013 at 04:37:38PM +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote:
> > > On Thu, Aug 29, 2013 at 06:41:41AM -0700, Guenter Roeck wrote:
> > > The majority of board vendors clearly don't expect the OS to drive the 
> > > hwmon chips - they're there for the benefit of ACPI and SMM code. That 
> > > doesn't mean that there's no benefit in having drivers for them, just 
> > > that the board vendors don't care about that use case and so won't do 
> > > anything to make it easier.
> > > 
> > Actually, not entirely true. Some vendors even provide software running on
> > Windows to access those chips (including access to fans controlled through
> > GPIO pins) and to provide information to the user. It might be more accurate
> > to say that some board vendors don't care about Linux (or about providing
> > access through ACPI, for that matter).
> 
> Eh. If they're really providing code that just assumes that hardware is 
> present and bangs on it, what choice do we have? You've checked that the 
> machines in question don't have a magic ACPI device that provides 
> resource information?
> 
> > Question here is what the Linux kernel community's policy is going to be
> > to handle such cases. Pragmatic or dogmatic ?
> 
> I don't see any benefit in changing the status quo. Sometimes hardware 
> is just shit. The majority of x86 vendors certainly don't care about 
> anything we do, so it's not like we're in a position to force them to 
> change.

Almost all the LaCie NASes are running a Linux based OS. I can assure
you that LaCie really takes care of Linux. Now, the main reason why the
Super-I/O ACPI support is missing on this boards is a lack of knowledge.
Thanks to this discussion, I am now aware of that. Then, for the next
products, I will do my best to get AMLs or at least ACPI IDs.

Thanks,

Simon

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