Re: [PATCH 5/5] net: add MTD support to eth_platform_get_mac_address()

From: Bartosz Golaszewski
Date: Thu Jul 19 2018 - 11:07:45 EST


2018-07-19 17:01 GMT+02:00 Andrew Lunn <andrew@xxxxxxx>:
> On Thu, Jul 19, 2018 at 10:14:29AM +0200, Bartosz Golaszewski wrote:
>> 2018-07-18 19:03 GMT+02:00 Andrew Lunn <andrew@xxxxxxx>:
>> >> >> +#ifdef CONFIG_MTD
>> >> >> + /* NOTE: this should go away as soon as MTD gets nvmem support. */
>> >> >> + if (!addr) {
>> >> >> + struct mtd_info *mtd;
>> >> >> + int rv;
>> >> >> +
>> >> >> + mtd = get_mtd_device_nm("MAC-Address");
>> >> >
>> >> > In order for this to go away, you need to keep backwards
>> >> > compatibility. When using nvmem, you look for a cell called
>> >> > "mac-address". Here you are looking for "MAC-Address". That is going
>> >> > to make backwards compatibility harder. How do you plan to do it?
>> >> >
>> >> > Andrew
>> >>
>> >> I'm trying to adjust to already existing users. The only user of
>> >> get_mtd_device_nm() who calls it to read the MAC address registers a
>> >> partition called "MAC-Address". We can't change it since it's visible
>> >> from user space. In the future we'd just have to have a list of
>> >> supported string that we'd use to do the nvmem lookup.
>> >
>> > Why not have the nvmem cell called "MAC-Address"? When you add nvmem
>> > support to MTD, i assume you are going to map each MTD partition to an
>> > nvmem cell?
>>
>> Because all existing users of nvmem use "mac-address" as the name of
>> this cell already. I guess we will need to live with both in this
>> particular function.
>
> So i'm not convinced this last patch is making things better. I would
> prefer if it was dropped for the moment. Wait until MTD via nvmem is
> actually implemented and there is a concrete concept of how a MAC
> address would be looked up without having lots of ugly code.
>
> Andrew

Unfortunately: this would effectively block me from improving the
support for older davinci boards. Having a (subjectively) ugly but
generalized way of reading the MAC address from MTD is still better
than using the MTD notifier from board files IMO.

Bart