Re: [rfc] exposing MMR's of on-chip peripherals for debugging purposes

[Mike Frysinger]

On Jan 28, 2008 8:04 AM, richard kennedy <richard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Mike Frysinger wrote:
> > On Jan 28, 2008 5:40 AM, Bryan Wu <bryan.wu@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >> On Mon, 2008-01-28 at 05:16 -0500, Mike Frysinger wrote:
> >>> the trouble is that this file currently weighs in at ~1.8 megs.  this
> >>> is because it contains all the information for all Blackfin processors
> >>> we support (which currently, is about ~23 variants).  it's only going
> >>> to get bigger as we support more.  Bryan cringes at the thought of
> >>> submitting it to LKML :).  so i'm fishing around for alternatives ...
> >>> the code was originally developed against 2.6.21, so UIO was not a
> >>> possibility.  i'm still not sure if it is ... i'd have to research it
> >>> a bit more and play with things.
> >> The main reason I am not willing to submit this to mainline is the file
> >> size. It's almost the biggest file in the kernel source. And it will be
> >> bigger and bigger when more and more new Blackfin processors supported
> >> by Linux kernel.
> >
> > a quick check of current git shows it is significantly larger than any other ;)
> >
> >> My suggestion is:
> >> Or more deeper thought:
> >>  - we don't need all the MMR setup at the same time for debugging. for example, maybe for some developer, he/she only needs one driver MMR for debugging such as watchdog/usb/spi/i2c ....
> >
> > splitting things up doesnt really address the original issue: there's
> > a lot of info here to be kept in the kernel
> >
> >>  - How about split the debug MMR table to each drivers or processors?
> >>  - watchdog driver implements a debug FS interface for debugging watchdog MMR and other drivers implement their own things.
> >
> > this had been mentioned before as a possibility but shot down.  you do
> > not want to tie the creation of these debug files to anything as the
> > prevents independent development of any other drivers/application that
> > use the same peripheral.
>
> there is a lot of duplication in your file, but you could slim it down a
> bit if thats the only objection.

i imagine there's a ton of duplication ... the file is auto-generated
from XML files, so i could take a look at the autogeneration producing
unified code.

> so you could have a simple function to create all the COUNTER elements
> from a given base address, then each variant only needs call that saving
> you lots of LOC.

also a possibility ... just have to be wary of the parts that have
slightly different peripherals (like the UART).
-mike
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