Re: [RFC][PATCH 2/3] usb: roles: Add usb role switch notifier.

[Hans de Goede]

Hi,

On 18-10-2019 22:12, John Stultz wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 18, 2019 at 12:59 PM Hans de Goede <hdegoede@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > On 18-10-2019 21:53, John Stultz wrote:
> > > On Fri, Oct 18, 2019 at 12:30 PM Hans de Goede <hdegoede@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > > > Looking at drivers/usb/typec/tcpm/tcpci.c: tcpci_set_vconn I see that
> > > > there is a data struct with vendor specific callbacks and that the
> > > > drivers/usb/typec/tcpm/tcpci_rt1711h.c implements that.
> > > >
> > > > So you may want something similar here. But things are tricky here,
> > > > because when nothing is connected you want to provide Vbus for
> > > > the USB-A ports, which means that if someone then connects a
> > > > USB-A to C cable to connect the board to a PC (switching the port
> > > > to device mode) there will be a time when both sides are supplying
> > > > 5V if I remember the schedule correctly.
> > >
> > > Ok. Thanks for the pointer, I'll take a look at that to see if I can
> > > get it to work.
> > >
> > > > I think that the original hack might not be that bad, the whole hw
> > > > design seems so, erm, broken, that you probably cannot do proper
> > > > roleswapping anyways.  So just tying Vbus to host mode might be
> > > > fine, the question then becomes again how can some other piece
> > > > of code listen to the role-switch events...
> > >
> > > So, at least in the current approach (see the v3 series), I've
> > > basically set the hub driver as an role-switch intermediary, sitting
> > > between the calls from the tcpm to the dwc3 driver. It actually works
> > > better then the earlier notifier method (which had some issues with
> > > reliably establishing the initial state on boot).  Does that approach
> > > work for you?
> >
> > That sounds like it might be a nice solution. But I have not seen the
> > code, I think I was not Cc-ed on v3. Do you have a patchwork or
> > lore.kernel.org link for me?
>
> Oh! I think I had you on CC, maybe it got caught in your spam folder?

More likely I just deleted mail to aggressively, sorry.

> My apologies either way! The thread is here:
>    https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20191016033340.1288-1-john.stultz@xxxxxxxxxx/
>
> And the hub/role-switch-intermediary driver is here:
>    https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20191016033340.1288-12-john.stultz@xxxxxxxxxx/

Hm, this looks very nice actually, much much better then the notifier stuff!

As for your:

"NOTE: It was noted that controlling the TYPEC_VBUS_POWER_OFF and
TYPEC_VBUS_POWER_ON values here is not reccomended. I'm looking
for a way to remove that bit from the logic here, but wanted to
still get feedback on this approach."

Comment in the commit message, normally a type-c port would turn external Vbus
off until a sink is connected, IIRC the same Vbus is also used for the TupeA ports
on the hub, so that would mean those are unusable when nothing is connected to
the TypeC port, which is not what you want.

So I think that given the special case / hack-ish hw you have, that just setting
Vbus based on the role is ok(ish).

Regards,

Hans