Re: [PATCH v3 2/2] clocksource: Add support for Xilinx AXI Timer

[Michal Simek]

Hi Uwe,

On 5/25/21 8:11 AM, Uwe Kleine-König wrote:
> Hello Sean, hello Michal,
> 
> On Mon, May 24, 2021 at 09:00:51AM +0200, Michal Simek wrote:
>> On 5/20/21 10:13 PM, Sean Anderson wrote:
>>> On 5/19/21 3:24 AM, Michal Simek wrote:
>>>> On 5/18/21 12:15 AM, Sean Anderson wrote:
>>>>> This could be deprecated, but cannot be removed since existing device
>>>>> trees (e.g. qemu) have neither clocks nor clock-frequency properties.
>>>>
>>>> Rob: Do we have any obligation to keep properties for other projects?
> 
> If a binding is in the wild and used to be documented, it has to stay.
> 
>>>>>> 4. Make driver as module
>>>>>> 5. Do whatever changes you want before adding pwm support
>>>>>> 6. Extend DT binding doc for PWM support
>>>>>> 7. Add PWM support
>>>>>
>>>>> Frankly, I am inclined to just leave the microblaze timer as-is. The PWM
>>>>> driver is completely independent. I have already put too much effort into
>>>>> this driver, and I don't have the energy to continue working on the
>>>>> microblaze timer.
>>>>
>>>> I understand. I am actually using axi timer as pwm driver in one of my
>>>> project but never had time to upstream it because of couple of steps above.
>>>> We need to do it right based on steps listed above. If this is too much
>>>> work it will have to wait. I will NACK all attempts to add separate
>>>> driver for IP which we already support in the tree.
>>>
>>> 1. Many timers have separate clocksource and PWM drivers. E.g. samsung,
>>>    renesas TPU, etc. It is completely reasonable to keep separate
>>>    drivers for these purposes. There is no Linux requirement that each
>>>    device have only one driver, especially if it has multiple functions
>>>    or ways to be configured.
>>
>> It doesn't mean that it was done properly and correctly. Code
>> duplication is bad all the time.
> 
> IMHO it's not so much about code duplication. Yes, code duplication is
> bad and should be prevented if possible. But it's more important to not
> introduce surprises. So I think it should be obvious from reading the
> device tree source which timer is used to provide the PWM. I don't care
> much if this is from an extra property (like xilinx,provide-pwm),
> overriding the compatible or some other explicit mechanism. IIUC in this
> suggested patch the selection is implicit and so this isn't so nice.
> 
>>> 2. If you want to do work on a driver, I'm all for it. However, if you
>>>    have not yet submitted that work to the list, you should not gate
>>>    other work behind it. Saying that X feature must be gated behind Y
>>>    *even if X works completely independently of Y* is just stifling
>>>    development.
>>
>> I gave you guidance how I think this should be done. I am not gating you
>> from this work. Your patch is not working on Microblaze arch which is
>> what I maintain. And I don't want to go the route that we will have two
>> drivers for the same IP without integration. We were there in past and
>> it is just pain.
>> I am expecting that PWM guys will guide how this should be done
>> properly. I haven't heard any guidance on this yet.
>> Thierry/Uwe: Any comment?
> 
> Not sure I can and want to provide guidance here. This is not Perl, but
> still TIMTOWTDI. If it was me who cared here, I'd look into the
> auxiliary bus (Documentation/driver-api/auxiliary_bus.rst) to check if
> it can help to solve this problem.

I recently got patches for cadence TTC driver
(drivers/clocksource/timer-cadence-ttc.c) for PWM support too. It is the
second and very similar case. This driver is used on Zynq as clock
source and can be also use as PWM. I can't believe that there are no
other examples how to deal with these timers which are used for PWM
generation.

Thanks,
Michal