Re: [PATCH v6 3/5] pinctrl: mediatek: allow common drivers to be built as modules

[Chen-Yu Tsai]

On Wed, Jul 22, 2026 at 4:36 PM AngeloGioacchino Del Regno
<angelogioacchino.delregno@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On 7/13/26 10:37, Justin Yeh wrote:
> > The MediaTek SoC pinctrl drivers link against the shared implementations
> > in pinctrl-mtk-common.c (v1), pinctrl-moore.c and pinctrl-mtmips.c. These
> > were built-in only: their Kconfig symbols were bool, they did not export
> > their entry points and they carried no MODULE_LICENSE().
> >
> > To let the individual SoC drivers be built as loadable modules (required
> > for Android GKI + vendor_dlkm, where vendor drivers must live outside the
> > GKI vmlinux), the shared code they depend on has to be modular too.
> > Otherwise selecting a SoC driver as =m forces the common symbol to =y and
> > the resulting module fails to link against the unexported common entry
> > points.
> >
> > Convert PINCTRL_MTK, PINCTRL_MTK_MOORE and PINCTRL_MTK_MTMIPS to
> > tristate, export the entry points used by the SoC drivers, and add
> > MODULE_DESCRIPTION()/MODULE_LICENSE() to the three common files.
> >
> > The v2 common code (PINCTRL_MTK_V2) is already modular, but mtk_rmw() was
> > never exported. It is called directly by SoC drivers such as mt7623, so
> > export it as well to keep those drivers linking once they are modular.
> >
> > Rather than exporting these shared symbols into the global namespace,
> > export them in the "MTK_PINCTRL" symbol namespace with
> > EXPORT_SYMBOL_NS_GPL() so they are only visible to drivers that opt in.
> > Each SoC driver that uses them therefore declares
> > MODULE_IMPORT_NS("MTK_PINCTRL").
> >
> > Signed-off-by: Justin Yeh <justin.yeh@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
>
> Some of the pinctrl drivers are missing
>        MODULE_DEVICE_TABLE(of, [match_array])
>
> ...therefore module build will fail.

Would it fail though? IIRC this statement is optional. It will still build
without it, but the module won't be loaded automatically when a matching
device is found.

This is a different kind of failure.

We probably still want to add them right now while we are modifying all
the drivers though.


ChenYu

> Have you tested compiling the kernel with *all of the MediaTek pinctrl drivers*
> set as module??? :-)
>
> Cheers,
> Angelo
>
> > ---
>