Re: [PATCH v4 2/8] OF: Introduce DT overlay support.

[Grant Likely]

On Mon, 26 May 2014 16:42:44 -0700, Guenter Roeck <linux@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On 05/26/2014 03:36 PM, Sebastian Reichel wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > On Mon, May 26, 2014 at 10:33:03PM +0100, Grant Likely wrote:
> >> After thinking about it more, I think it is very likely that removing
> >> all the overlays is the correct thing to do in the kexec use-case. When
> >> kexec-ing, it makes sense that we'd want the exact same behaviour from
> >> the kexec'ed kernel. That means we want the device drivers to do the
> >> same thing including loading whatever overlays they depend on.
> >>
> >> If the flattened tree was left applied, then the behaviour becomes
> >> different.
> >>
> >> I say always remove the overlays unless explicitly told not to, but I'm
> >> struggling to come up with use cases where keeping them applied is
> >> desirable.
> >
> > I would assume, that I want them applied in most cases. DT describes
> > the hardware. If I kexec into a new kernel I change software, not
> > hardware.
> >
> > Maybe I'm missing the main purpose of the feature. I currently see
> > two useful usecases for DT overlays:
> >
> > 1. The dtb the kernel is booted with cannot be changed for some
> >     reason, but the board has additional hardware attached (e.g.
> >     the user added a sensor on the i2c bus)
> > 2. The hardware is changed on the fly (e.g. the user flashed the
> >     FPGA part of a zynq processor), sensors on i2c bus, ...
> >
> > In both cases the kernel should be booted with the additional
> > overlay information IMHO. Though for the second case it should
> > be possible to remove the "programmed" hardware information
> > somehow.
> >
> 
> 3. Some hot-plug device or card is inserted or removed.
> 
> I would argue that the kernel should _not_ be booted with the overlay in place.
> Otherwise the code handling overlays would have to have special handling
> for the restart case, which is much more complex than just to re-insert
> the overlay when it is determined that the device or card is still there.

Exactly.

g.

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