[PATCH v6 02/35] component: Introduce the aggregate bus_type

[Laurent Pinchart]

Hi Daniel,

On Mon, Jan 31, 2022 at 04:15:09PM +0100, Daniel Vetter wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 31, 2022 at 2:48 PM Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
> > On Thu, Jan 27, 2022 at 12:01:08PM -0800, Stephen Boyd wrote:
> > > The component framework only provides 'bind' and 'unbind' callbacks to
> > > tell the host driver that it is time to assemble the aggregate driver
> > > now that all the components have probed. The component framework doesn't
> > > attempt to resolve runtime PM or suspend/resume ordering, and explicitly
> > > mentions this in the code. This lack of support leads to some pretty
> > > gnarly usages of the 'prepare' and 'complete' power management hooks in
> > > drivers that host the aggregate device, and it fully breaks down when
> > > faced with ordering shutdown between the various components, the
> > > aggregate driver, and the host driver that registers the whole thing.
> > >
> > > In a concrete example, the MSM display driver at drivers/gpu/drm/msm is
> > > using 'prepare' and 'complete' to call the drm helpers
> > > drm_mode_config_helper_suspend() and drm_mode_config_helper_resume()
> > > respectively, so that it can move the aggregate driver suspend/resume
> > > callbacks to be before and after the components that make up the drm
> > > device call any suspend/resume hooks they have. This only works as long
> > > as the component devices don't do anything in their own 'prepare' and
> > > 'complete' callbacks. If they did, then the ordering would be incorrect
> > > and we would be doing something in the component drivers before the
> > > aggregate driver could do anything. Yuck!
> > >
> > > Similarly, when trying to add shutdown support to the MSM driver we run
> > > across a problem where we're trying to shutdown the drm device via
> > > drm_atomic_helper_shutdown(), but some of the devices in the encoder
> > > chain have already been shutdown. This time, the component devices
> > > aren't the problem (although they could be if they did anything in their
> > > shutdown callbacks), but there's a DSI to eDP bridge in the encoder
> > > chain that has already been shutdown before the driver hosting the
> > > aggregate device runs shutdown. The ordering of driver probe is like
> > > this:
> > >
> > >  1. msm_pdev_probe() (host driver)
> > >  2. DSI bridge
> > >  3. aggregate bind
> > >
> > > When it comes to shutdown we have this order:
> > >
> > >  1. DSI bridge
> > >  2. msm_pdev_shutdown() (host driver)
> > >
> > > and so the bridge is already off, but we want to communicate to it to
> > > turn things off on the display during msm_pdev_shutdown(). Double yuck!
> > > Unfortunately, this time we can't split shutdown into multiple phases
> > > and swap msm_pdev_shutdown() with the DSI bridge.
> > >
> > > Let's make the component_master_ops into an actual device driver that has
> > > probe/remove/shutdown functions. The driver will only be bound to the
> > > aggregate device once all component drivers have called component_add()
> > > to indicate they're ready to assemble the aggregate driver. This allows
> > > us to attach shutdown logic (and in the future runtime PM logic) to the
> > > aggregate driver so that it runs the hooks in the correct order.
> >
> > I know I asked before, but I can not remember the answer.
> >
> > This really looks like it is turning into the aux bus code.  Why can't
> > you just use that instead here for this type of thing?  You are creating
> > another bus and drivers for that bus that are "fake" which is great, but
> > that's what the aux bus code was supposed to help out with, so we
> > wouldn't have to write more of these.
> >
> > So, if this really is different, can you document it here so I remember
> > next time you resend this patch series?
> 
> aux takes a device and splits it into a lot of sub-devices, each with
> their own driver.
> 
> This takes a pile of devices, and turns it into a single logical
> device with a single driver.
> 
> So aux is 1:N, component is N:1.
> 
> And yes you asked this already, I typed this up already :-)

That's clear, but I'm still not sure why we need a bus for this :-) I'm
not very enthousiastic about that. Some of our problems come from the
fact we need to coordinate many devices, adding new ones hardly seem to
be a solution to that. Granted, the components framework doesn't work
nicely, and is in dire need of love (and documentation), or possibly
better a complete replacement. I'll try to review the series this week
and see if alternatives would be possible.

-- 
Regards,

Laurent Pinchart