Subject: Re: [i2c] [PATCH 3/3] Add device tree compatible aliases to i2c drivers

From: Olof Johansson <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2008 18:32:49 -0600

On Tue, Jan 22, 2008 at 09:09:16PM -0500, Jon Smirl wrote:
> PowerPC device trees use a different naming convention than the Linux
> kernel.  Provide alias names for i2c drivers in order to allow them to
> be loaded by device tree name. The OF_ID macro ensures that the aliases
> are only present in powerpc builds and separated into their own namespace.

Hmm. I just realized that there's yet another twist to the PPC device
bindings that's not yet considered:

Currently the device tree only contains one compatible field for most of
the devices. But it's perfectly legal (actually, recommended) to have more
than one compatible field -- they go from the specific to the generic.

For example, for an eeprom I might have: "MCHP,24lc128est",
"MCHP,24xx128", "24c128". The at24 driver (not in mainline yet :) would
likely match with "24c128", and it would normally not make sense to have
to list all specific vendors and models of the device type in question
in the driver.

I can't register a board_info for each of the compatible fields without
changing the way the i2c drivers are registered, since the creation of
the duplicate entries will start reporting errors. I also shouldn't
(reasonably) have to register every single possible first (i.e. most
specific) compatible-field -- that goes against the whole concept of
having more than one compatible string.

So it seems that the solution would be to make i2c_board_info take a
list of names for the device, and each of them has to be matched with
all drivers, taking the first match.

Sounds reasonable to everyone? I can provide a patch to go on top of
what's already proposed.

-Olof