RE: [RFC v2 0/4] Introduce i3c device userspace interface

[Vitor Soares]

Hi,

From: Boris Brezillon <boris.brezillon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, Feb 17, 2020 at 15:36:22

> On Mon, 17 Feb 2020 16:06:45 +0100
> Arnd Bergmann <arnd@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, Feb 17, 2020 at 3:51 PM Boris Brezillon
> > <boris.brezillon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > > Sorry for taking so long to reply, and thanks for working on that topic.
> > >
> > > On Wed, 29 Jan 2020 13:17:31 +0100
> > > Vitor Soares <Vitor.Soares@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > >  
> > > > For today there is no way to use i3c devices from user space and
> > > > the introduction of such API will help developers during the i3c device
> > > > or i3c host controllers development.
> > > >
> > > > The i3cdev module is highly based on i2c-dev and yet I tried to address
> > > > the concerns raised in [1].
> > > >
> > > > NOTES:
> > > > - The i3cdev dynamically request an unused major number.
> > > >
> > > > - The i3c devices are dynamically exposed/removed from dev/ folder based
> > > >   on if they have a device driver bound to it.  
> > >
> > > May I ask why you need to automatically bind devices to the i3cdev
> > > driver when they don't have a driver matching the device id
> > > loaded/compiled-in? If we get the i3c subsystem to generate proper
> > > uevents we should be able to load the i3cdev module and bind the device
> > > to this driver using a udev rule.  
> > 
> > I think that would require manual configuration to ensure that the correct
> > set of devices get bound to either the userspace driver or an in-kernel
> > driver.
> 
> Hm, isn't that what udev is supposed to do anyway? Remember that
> I3C devices expose a manufacturer and part-id (which are similar to the
> USB vendor and product ids), so deciding when an I3C device should be
> bound to the i3cdev driver should be fairly easy, and that's a
> per-device decision anyway.
> 
> > The method from the current patch series is more complicated,
> > but it means that any device can be accessed by the user space driver
> > as long as it's not already owned by a kernel driver.
> 
> Well, I'm more worried about the extra churn this auto-binding logic
> might create for the common 'on-demand driver loading' use case. At
> first, there's no driver matching a specific device, but userspace
> might load one based on the uevents it receives. With the current
> approach, that means we'd first have to unbind the device before
> loading the driver. AFAICT, no other subsystem does that.

I'm about to finish v3 (today or tomorrow) and I think I fixed all 
concerns rise during v2. I would like you to see that version before any 
change.

Best regards,
Vitor Soares