Messages in this thread | | | Date | Wed, 11 Jun 2008 09:33:55 +1200 | From | Ryan Mallon <> | Subject | Re: [PATCH, RFC] Earlier I2C initialization |
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Jean Delvare wrote: > On Tue, 10 Jun 2008 09:27:34 +1200, Ryan Mallon wrote: > >> David Brownell wrote: >> >>> On Monday 09 June 2008, Ryan Mallon wrote: >>> >>> >>>>> Talk to i2c and framebuffer people about changing the link order. >>>>> >>>>> i2c should really be initialised before framebuffer devices because >>>>> framebuffer devices tend to want to read DDC from monitors, which is >>>>> basically a I2C EEPROM in the monitor. >>>>> > > This is already the case. i2c-core is initialized with > subsys_initcall(), so it's available to all drivers initialized with > module_init(). > > >>>>> ... but there's probably some reason why it's done the way it is today, >>>>> and changing it could well cause stuff to break. >>>>> >>>>> >>>> We have made i2c the first driver subsystem to come up in our 2.6.20 >>>> kernel since we use i2c io expanders for power domain control. All we >>>> did was change drivers/Makefile so that obj-$(CONFIG_I2C) += i2c/ is at >>>> the very top of the file. We didn't have any problems with doing this. >>>> YMMV of course. >>>> > > Why don't you simply initialize the drivers in question with > subsys_initcall()? That's what i2c-pnx, i2c-omap, i2c-davinci and > tps65010 are doing at the moment. > > How does this work for embedded devices where the same architecture is used in many different configurations? For example, we have a PXA270 setup where we need i2c early, but many other PXA setups do not, so making i2c-pxa subsys_initcall to support a single board is maybe the wrong way to go?
>>> OMAP does much the same thing, for the same reason, and the I2C >>> adapter gets initialized earlier too (so power management chips >>> will be fully usable before driver_initcall code runs). >>> >>> Unless there's a downside on x86, I'd just suggest someone submit >>> a patch moving I2C init "early" so it merges in 2.6.27 ... cc to >>> LKML to scare out more potential problems, but I have a hard time >>> imagining there'd really be any. >>> >> Okay, heres the patch. Is untested though (other than our experience >> under 2.6.20), so it probably needs some people to test. I'm not >> subscribed to LKML, so can people CC me if necessary. >> >> Signed-off-by: Ryan Mallon <ryan@bluewatersys.com> >> >> diff --git a/drivers/Makefile b/drivers/Makefile >> index f65deda..9eaf236 100644 >> --- a/drivers/Makefile >> +++ b/drivers/Makefile >> @@ -5,6 +5,7 @@ >> # Rewritten to use lists instead of if-statements. >> # >> >> +obj-y += i2c/ >> obj-$(CONFIG_HAVE_GPIO_LIB) += gpio/ >> > > Some i2c bus drivers bit-bang GPIO pins... > > >> obj-$(CONFIG_PCI) += pci/ >> > > ... and many are PCI devices, so will this work OK? > Probably not :-). I didn't have hardware to test, it was just easy to put together the patch. I figured a change like this would require extensive testing anyway, since it is bound to break some obscure setup at least.
I still think that possibly a better solution is to allow the link order for the driver subsystems to be configured somehow. At least for the embedded space this is useful if a particular board has some dependency on i2c, spi or some other subsystem being available early on, then it can be configured on a per board basis, rather than per arch, or per driver.
I'm not sure how to accomplish this though, I don't think Kconfig lends it self to this sort of thing very well, and I don't understand the kernel build process well enough to attempt it myself.
~Ryan
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