Re: [PATCH 3/6] net: bcmgenet: enable automatic phy discovery

[Andrew Lunn]

> I do not think we are asking to get properties hard coded, we are asking
> to get a proper representation of these MDIO devices, including their
> supserset that PHY devices are into ACPI, in a way that is usable by the
> core MDIO layer without drivers cutting corners.

Yes.

And i'm also interested in this in a generic way. Ethernet switches
often have MDIO busses, with lots of PHYs on them. Some might argue
that switches are out of scope for ACPI, but people have shown
interest in getting ACPI working on Espressobin,
http://espressobin.net/ which has a marvell Switch on it.

There are also some broadcom SoCs with generic PHYs, not ethernet PHYs
as devices on MDIO busses.

And we have people submitting patches to other drivers at the moment,
which just seem to stuff DT properties into ACPI tables. At least in
networking, ACPI seems to be a wild west, anything goes, no
documentation, no standardisation, nobody has an ACPI maintainer role
over the whole kernel who cares about it.

   Andrew