Re: [PATCH 04/10] regulator: of: switch to using class_find_device_by_fwnode()

[Andrew Lunn]

On Mon, Mar 23, 2026 at 07:05:13PM +0000, Mark Brown wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 23, 2026 at 11:28:27AM -0700, Dmitry Torokhov wrote:
> > On Mon, Mar 23, 2026 at 02:00:43PM +0000, Mark Brown wrote:
> 
> > > The regulator API is very deliberately specifically using the OF APIs,
> > > not the ACPI APIs, since ACPI really doesn't want to model regulators.
> 
> > For now? We also have software nodes and maybe we come up with something
> > else in the future...
> 
> > I think we should use firmware-agnostic APIs as much as possible, and
> > only use OF- or ACPI-specific ones when there is no generic equivalent.
> > This makes the code most flexible.
> 
> I think this is a worrying idea for core code like this, we have
> specific firmware bindings for specific firmware interfaces with the
> different interfaces having very different ideas of how things should be
> modelled.  The chances that firmware agnostic code is going to do the
> right thing seem low, and encouraging the use of generic APIs that might
> happen to run OK raises the risk that we'll get firmware vendors relying
> on them and leaving us with a conceptual mishmash to sort through.

How do you handle deprecated OF properties? This is a problem i've run
into before. A developer needs an ACPI binding, so they blindly
convert from of_ to device_ without engaging brain. As a result, they
bring all the deprecated OF properties we want to die into the brand
new ACPI bindings.

A agree with Mark here. OF != ACPI, and anything which makes it appear
they are the same is just going to lead developers down the wrong path
and increase Maintainers work pointing out all the problems.

    Andrew