Re: [RFC] dt-bindings: net: phy: Add subnode for LED configuration

[Matthias Kaehlcke]

Hi Andrew,

On Wed, Jul 24, 2019 at 08:04:30PM +0200, Andrew Lunn wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 22, 2019 at 03:37:41PM -0700, Matthias Kaehlcke wrote:
> > The LED behavior of some Ethernet PHYs is configurable. Add an
> > optional 'leds' subnode with a child node for each LED to be
> > configured. The binding aims to be compatible with the common
> > LED binding (see devicetree/bindings/leds/common.txt).
> > 
> > A LED can be configured to be 'on' when a link with a certain speed
> > is active, or to blink on RX/TX activity. For the configuration to
> > be effective it needs to be supported by the hardware and the
> > corresponding PHY driver.
> > 
> > Suggested-by: Andrew Lunn <andrew@xxxxxxx>
> > Signed-off-by: Matthias Kaehlcke <mka@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > ---
> > This RFC is a follow up of the discussion on "[PATCH v2 6/7]
> > dt-bindings: net: realtek: Add property to configure LED mode"
> > (https://lore.kernel.org/patchwork/patch/1097185/).
> > 
> > For now posting as RFC to get a basic agreement on the bindings
> > before proceding with the implementation in phylib and a specific
> > driver.
> > ---
> >  Documentation/devicetree/bindings/net/phy.txt | 33 +++++++++++++++++++
> >  1 file changed, 33 insertions(+)
> > 
> > diff --git a/Documentation/devicetree/bindings/net/phy.txt b/Documentation/devicetree/bindings/net/phy.txt
> > index 9b9e5b1765dd..ad495d3abbbb 100644
> > --- a/Documentation/devicetree/bindings/net/phy.txt
> > +++ b/Documentation/devicetree/bindings/net/phy.txt
> > @@ -46,6 +46,25 @@ Optional Properties:
> >    Mark the corresponding energy efficient ethernet mode as broken and
> >    request the ethernet to stop advertising it.
> >  
> > +- leds: A sub-node which is a container of only LED nodes. Each child
> > +    node represents a PHY LED.
> > +
> > +  Required properties for LED child nodes:
> > +  - reg: The ID number of the LED, typically corresponds to a hardware ID.
> > +
> > +  Optional properties for child nodes:
> > +  - label: The label for this LED. If omitted, the label is taken from the node
> > +    name (excluding the unit address). It has to uniquely identify a device,
> > +    i.e. no other LED class device can be assigned the same label.
> 
> Hi Matthias
> 
> I've thought about label a bit more. 
> 
> > +			label = "ethphy0:left:green";
> 
> We need to be careful with names here. systemd etc renames
> interfaces. ethphy0 could in fact be connected to enp3s0, or eth0
> might get renamed to eth1, etc. So i think we should avoid things like
> ethphy0.

Agreed, this could be problematic.

> Also, i'm not sure we actually need a label, at least not to
> start with.Do we have any way to expose it to the user?

As of now I don't plan to expose the label to userspace by the PHY
driver/framework itself.

>From my side we can omit the label for now and add it later if needed.

> If we do ever make it part of the generic LED framework, we can then
> use the label. At that point, i would probably combine the label with
> the interface name in a dynamic way to avoid issues like this.

Sounds good.

Thanks

Matthias