On Wednesday 25 April 2007, Mike Frysinger wrote:
> the spi_device structure has a bits_per_word so that you can change
> the value on a per-device setting, yet the spi_board_info structure
> does not ... this means that the bus-specific structure has to have a
> bits_per_word member which the spi bus driver will copy into the spi
> device bits_per_word member
Actually that's more likely a driver-specific characteristic than
something related to board wiring/configuration ... a characteristic
of the particular protocol requests being made. That's why for
example bits_per_word has a per-transfer override, and drivers are
able to call spi_setup(spi).
> is there something obvious i'm missing ? seems to me that if the
> generic spi framework respects bits_per_word on a per-spi device
> basis, then it should be exposed in the generic info structure so that
> the setting can be tracked in the boards file ...
The initial driver set didn't need it, that's all. ISTR someone
else pointed out this quirk, but never provided a patch to resolve
the issue.