Re: [PATCH] irqchip: stm32: add a second level init to request hwspinlock

[Fabien DESSENNE]

Hi Marc,

Thank you for your feedback. Let me try to explain this patch, and the 
reason of its unusual implementation choices.


Regarding the driver init mode:
As an important requirement, I want to keep this irq driver declared 
with IRQCHIP_DECLARE(), so it is initialized early from 
start_kernel()/init_IRQ().
Most of the other irq drivers are implemented this way and I imagine 
that this ensures the availability of the irq drivers, before the other 
platform drivers get probed.



Regarding the second init:
With the usage of the hwspinlock framework (used to protect against 
coprocessor concurrent access to registers) we have a problem as the 
hwspinlock driver is not available when the irq driver is being initialized.
In order to solve this, I added a second initialization where we get a 
reference to hwspinlock.
You pointed that we are not supposed to use of_node_clear_flag (which 
allows to get a second init call) :
I spent some time to find any information about it, but could not find 
any reason to not use it.
Please, let me know if I missed something here.



Regarding the inits sequence and dependencies:
- The second init is guaranteed to be called after the first one, since 
start_kernel()->init_IRQ() is called before platform drivers init.
- During the second init, the dependency with the hwspinlock driver is 
implemented correctly : it makes use of defered probe when needed.



I understand that this patch is 'surprising' but I hope that my 
explanations justify its implementation.
Waiting for your feedback

BR

Fabien

On 07/03/2019 5:44 PM, Marc Zyngier wrote:
> On 07/03/2019 16:23, Fabien Dessenne wrote:
>> Requesting hwspinlock, at the first time it is used, is not correct:
>> indeed, at that moment we are under raw_spin_lock_irqsave() context and
>> hwspin_lock_request_specific() may sleep ("BUG: sleeping function called
>> from invalid context").
>> Requesting hwspinlock during the init (stm32*_exti_of_init()) is also
>> not possible (the hwspinlock framework is not ready at that stage of the
>> kernel init).
>> As a consequence, add a second level init (probed with arch_initcall)
>> where we can safely request hwspinlock.
> No, this is fairly broken. You're playing with stuff you're not supposed
> to (OF_POPULATE? really?), and adding initcalls is completely unreliable
> (things depend on the link order and will randomly break).
>
> If you need dependencies, implement them correctly. Turn this driver
> into a real device driver (in the platform device sense), and return
> PROBE_DEFER when you can't find your dependency.
>
> Thanks,
>
> 	M.