On Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 06:40:49PM +0000, Russell King - ARM Linux wrote:
quoted text
> On Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 04:21:47PM +0100, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
> > On Tuesday 30 November 2010, Linus Walleij wrote:
> > > 2010/11/26 Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de>:
> > > 
> > > > * When you say that the devices are static, I hope you do not mean
> > > >  static in the C language sense. We used to allow devices to be
> > > >  declared as "static struct" and registered using
> > > >  platform_device_register (or other bus specific functions). This
> > > >  is no longer valid and we are removing the existing users, do not
> > > >  add new ones. When creating a platform device, use
> > > >  platform_device_register_simple or platform_device_register_resndata.
> > > 
> > > Is this part of the generic ARM runtime multi-platform kernel
> > > and device trees shebang?
> > > 
> > > The Ux500 still isn't in that sector, it needs extensive rewriting
> > > of arch/arm/mach-ux500 to be done first, so as to support e.g.
> > > U8500 and U5500 with a single kernel image.
> > > 
> > > Trying to skin that cat that as part of this review is a bit too
> > > much to ask IMO, I'd rather have the author of this driver
> > > adapt to whatever platform data registration mechanism is
> > > in place for the merge window. Else it needs fixing as part
> > > of a bigger endavour to root out compile-time platform
> > > configuration.
> > 
> > The 'no static devices' rule is something that Greg brought up
> > at the embedded developer session during PlumbersConf this year,
> > I wasn't aware of the problem before that either.
> > 
> > It is not related to the multi-platform kernel work and it's
> > not ARM specific.
> > 
> > Maybe Greg can give a short explanation of the impact of this.
> > AFAIR, static device definitions still work, but there are
> > plans to remove that capability in the future.
> 
> There's lots of static devices, not only platform devices, in the ARM
> tree.  It's going to be a hell of a lot of work to fix this all up
> properly.

I agree, it's been abused for many years this way :(

quoted text
> I hope that the capability for static devices won't disappear until
> the huge pile of work on ARM has been completed.

Don't worry, it will not.

thanks,

greg k-h
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