[PATCH v3 02/10] drm/panel: Check for already prepared/enabled in drm_panel

[Doug Anderson]

Hi,

On Wed, Jul 26, 2023 at 5:41 AM Maxime Ripard <mripard at kernel.org> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> On Tue, Jul 25, 2023 at 01:34:37PM -0700, Douglas Anderson wrote:
> > NOTE: arguably, the right thing to do here is actually to skip this
> > patch and simply remove all the extra checks from the individual
> > drivers. Perhaps the checks were needed at some point in time in the
> > past but maybe they no longer are? Certainly as we continue
> > transitioning over to "panel_bridge" then we expect there to be much
> > less variety in how these calls are made. When we're called as part of
> > the bridge chain, things should be pretty simple. In fact, there was
> > some discussion in the past about these checks [1], including a
> > discussion about whether the checks were needed and whether the calls
> > ought to be refcounted. At the time, I decided not to mess with it
> > because it felt too risky.
>
> Yeah, I'd agree here too. I've never found evidence that it was actually
> needed and it really looks like cargo cult to me.
>
> And if it was needed, then I'm not sure we need refcounting either. We
> don't have refcounting for atomic_enable / disable, we have a sound API
> design that makes sure we don't fall into that trap :)
>
> > Looking closer at it now, I'm fairly certain that nothing in the
> > existing codebase is expecting these calls to be refcounted. The only
> > real question is whether someone is already doing something to ensure
> > prepare()/unprepare() match and enabled()/disable() match. I would say
> > that, even if there is something else ensuring that things match,
> > there's enough complexity that adding an extra bool and an extra
> > double-check here is a good idea. Let's add a drm_warn() to let people
> > know that it's considered a minor error to take advantage of
> > drm_panel's double-checking but we'll still make things work fine.
>
> I'm ok with this, if we follow-up in a couple of releases and remove it
> and all the calls.
>
> Could you add a TODO item so that we can keep a track of it? A follow-up
> is fine if you don't send a new version of that series.

By this, I think you mean to add a "TODO" comment inline in the code?

Also: I was thinking that we'd keep the check in "drm_panel.c" with
the warning message indefinitely. You think it should be eventually
removed? If we are truly thinking of removing it eventually, this
feels like it should be a more serious warning message like a WARN(1,
...) to make it really obvious to people that they're relying on
behavior that will eventually go away.


-Doug