Re: linux-next: manual merge of the sound tree with the arm-soc tree

From: Sameer Pujar
Date: Mon Feb 25 2019 - 06:24:48 EST



On 2/25/2019 4:44 PM, Takashi Iwai wrote:
On Mon, 25 Feb 2019 10:19:15 +0100,
Arnd Bergmann wrote:
On Mon, Feb 25, 2019 at 2:36 AM Stephen Rothwell <sfr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi Takashi,

Today's linux-next merge of the sound tree got conflicts in:

arch/arm64/boot/dts/nvidia/tegra194-p2972-0000.dts
arch/arm64/boot/dts/nvidia/tegra210-p2597.dtsi

between commits:

5eef17ee764d ("arm64: tegra: p2972: Sort nodes properly")
be4f0dd347ad ("arm64: tegra: p2597: Sort nodes by unit-address")

from the arm-soc tree and commit:

11ce4308307c ("arm64: tegra: custom name for hda sound card")

from the sound tree.

I fixed it up (see below - in tegra194-p2972-0000.dts. the line added
just needed to be moved up a few lines) and can carry the fix as
necessary. This is now fixed as far as linux-next is concerned, but any
non trivial conflicts should be mentioned to your upstream maintainer
when your tree is submitted for merging. You may also want to consider
cooperating with the maintainer of the conflicting tree to minimise any
particularly complex conflicts.
The merge looks fine to me, but I wonder about that commit
in the alsa tree, why does the sound card need a board specific
name?

I see this property being used in commit c0bde003a013 ("ALSA:
hda/tegra: sound card name from device tree"), which removes
a questionable use of the root compatible property, replacing
it with the new 'nvidia,model' property. We don't do this for any
other subsystem, so why does the sound subsystem export
information about the board as a string here?
The sound subsystem exports merely some understandable name string
for the given sound card object, and that was composed from the
compatible string in the past, which turned out to be useless on some
configs.

But this kind of addition is an extremely bad manner, I'm fine to
revert these (at best with a better alternative). This isn't about
any functionality but rather some readable information that isn't a
part of API.

The motivation for adding custom sound card name is following,
1. When for boards, multiple HDMI/DP ports are exposed, it is sometimes
ÂÂ necessary to know the default port or any customization for that matter.
ÂÂ Audio userspace can distinguish based on the sound card names.
2. Multiple sound cards can coexist for a platform, the indication of particular
ÂÂ audio path is useful.
3. It can help to customize audio paths.
ÂÂ Generally people use "*,model" property in DT to name the sound complex.
ÂÂ Ex: "samsung,model" [sound/soc/samsung/snow.c]
ÂÂÂÂÂÂ "rockchip,model" [sound/soc/rockchip/rockchip_rt5645.c]

Thanks,
Sameer.
thanks,

Takashi