Re: [PATCH 0/8] ARM: sun8i: a33: Mali improvements

[Tobias Jakobi]

Hello Maxime,

Maxime Ripard wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Thu, Feb 16, 2017 at 01:43:06PM +0100, Tobias Jakobi wrote:
>> I was wondering about the following. Wasn't there some strict
>> requirement about code going upstream, which also included that there
>> was a full open-source driver stack for it?
>>
>> I don't see how this is the case for Mali, neither in the kernel, nor in
>> userspace. I'm aware that the Mali kernel driver is open-source. But it
>> is not upstream, maintained out of tree, and won't land upstream in its
>> current form (no resemblence to a DRM driver at all). And let's not talk
>> about the userspace part.
>>
>> So, why should this be here?
> 
> The device tree is a representation of the hardware itself. The state
> of the driver support doesn't change the hardware you're running on,
> just like your BIOS/UEFI on x86 won't change the device it reports to
> Linux based on whether it has a driver for it.
Like Emil already said, the new bindings and the DT entries are solely
introduced to support a proprietary out-of-tree module.

The current workflow when introducing new DT entries is the following:
- upstream a driver that uses the entries
- THEN add the new entries

I'm against adding such entries without having any upstream "consumer".


With best wishes,
Tobias


> So yes, unfortunately, we don't have a driver upstream at the
> moment. But that doesn't prevent us from describing the hardware
> accurately.
> 
> Maxime
>