Subject: Re: "cell-index" vs. "index" vs. no index in I2C device nodes

From: Segher Boessenkool <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 7 Jun 2008 02:24:15 +0200

>> Well, I just don't see the point of having two different properties 
>> that say the
>> same thing.  I'm not an IEE 1275 purist, so I don't think we should 
>> be hampered
>> by old node definitions.  I especially don't like having a property 
>> specifically
>> for indexing I2C nodes that can't be used to enumerate other nodes.
>
> It's not about purity.  It's about overloading something that has
> existing semantics just because you have one usecase that you _think_
> needs it.
>
> If everyone did that, this whole device tree concept is going to just
> be one big cluster f*ck.

One important way of preventing this overloading and death-by-complexity
is to make most properties specific to a particular binding.  It is good
if other bindings that need similar functionality can use similar
properties, or sometimes even identical ones; but there are only a few
properties that are defined for *every* node.

Trying to make stuff too generic just doesn't work.

Segher