Re: [PATCH net-next v10 6/9] net: phy: phy_port: Store information about a MII port's vacant state

[Maxime Chevallier]

Hi Andrew,

On 5/14/26 15:58, Andrew Lunn wrote:
> > We have information about what MII they can handle, however we don't
> > store anything about whether they are currently connected to an SFP
> > module or not. As phy_port aims at listing the front-facing ports, let's
> > store an "vacant" bit to know whether or not a MII port is currently
> > vacant (i.e. there's no module in the SFP cage), or not (i.e.
> > there's an SFP module).
>
> vacant == False actually means a bit more than there is a module in
> the cage. It also means that, so far, we have not had any errors
> trying to use the module. If there is an error, we might have a module
> physically in the cage, but vacant == True.

This is a good point. Even with an error, we should have vacant = false.

TBH I'm unsure how to name this, vacant may not be the best word there, 
but I'm struggling to find a better term.

maybe "empty" ?

> We should be careful with the wording, both in the commit message, and
> here:
>
> > + * @vacant: For MII ports, indicates whether or not the port has a connection to
> > + *	    another device (e.g. for SFP ports, indicates the absence or presence
> > + *	    of an SFP module)
> >    */

I'll reword this along with the netlink doc. Thank you very very much 
for the reviews,

Maxime

>      Andrew