Messages in this thread | | | Subject | Re: usb: thoughts of adding more support for FT232H | From | Song Qiang <> | Date | Sun, 16 Dec 2018 23:45:45 +0800 |
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On 2018/12/13 下午9:23, Johan Hovold wrote:
> Hi Song, > > Sorry about the late reply. > > On Thu, Dec 06, 2018 at 02:02:21PM +0800, Song Qiang wrote: >> On 12/5/18 11:17 PM, Anatolij Gustschin wrote: >>> Hi, >>> >>> On Wed, 5 Dec 2018 22:10:40 +0800 >>> Song Qiang songqiang1304521@gmail.com wrote: >>> ... >>>> I've been developing some iio device drivers and found that some people >>>> would like to test their devices with a qemu system which requires an >>>> i2c or spi port on our development hosts. Usually this is achieved with >>>> a DLN-2 adapter, while this is a bit difficult for me because it costs >>>> ~175$ in my country. Then I found that FTDI's FT232H supports both these >>>> two modes and costs only less than 5$ but without full support in kernel. >>>> The ftdi-sio driver supports FT232H only as a serial converter. >>>> So I'm planning to write a mfd driver for it supports both these three >>>> modes, here are my thoughts: >>> There already has been a discussion [1] about adding an MFD driver for >>> FT232H, since the operating modes are mutually exclusive (and bus pins >>> shared between different modes), the MFD approach doesn't seem to be >>> a good fit. >>> >>>> - This device cannot support these three modes together because they >>>> share some common pins, so I'm planning to add a sysfs entry >>>> 'current_mode' for selecting which mode the device should be working >>>> on. >>>> - This device is in uart mode on reset, so default mode would be reset, >>>> too. This also helps for people only want to use this as a serial >>>> converter feels nothing has happened (compatible). >>>> - I was trying to reuse the ftdi-sio driver but it seems like mfd can >>>> only register platform devices, while this is a usb driver. I may >>>> have to copy some functions from this driver. >>>> >>>> Would you share any ideas? I'd appreciate it. >>> There is a patch series [2] adding an interface driver for FT232H- >>> based adapter devices, it already supports adding custom MPSSE based >>> SPI busses with SPI slaves for a custom USB PID. It already supports >>> adding custom CBUS-/MPSSE-GPIO adapters for user-defined USB PID. >>> Adding I2C driver/adapter support should be easy, too. Maybe you can >>> re-use it. >>> [1] https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/9828985 >>> [2] https://patchwork.kernel.org/project/linux-usb/list/?series=48255 >> Patch series [2] added new custom PIDs to distinguish the mode this device >> should be in when powered on, is this right? Since USB has a convention for all >> the VIDs and PIDs, is this really a good approach to use some us-defined PIDs? > As I mentioned, I have not really had time to look at [2] yet, but yes, > the driver appears to encode the mode configuration in the device id > table. > >> In the discussion [1] #4, Johan said that mfd is not suitable for this situation >> because 'all drivers for these devices be able to retrieve the current mode >> during probe and only bind when the mode matches'. > Right, MFD is for devices exposing multiple functions concurrently, but > the FTDI serial-engine modes are mutually exclusive (as you also point > out below). > >> I think this is saying that we can only register these devices(i2c, spi, gpio) >> when we plug it in, but FT232H's functions are surely mutually exclusive, so >> can't we dynamically register these devices in userspace? I mean through a sysfs >> interface, and through the implementation functions of this interface, we can >> try to use mfd_add_devices() and mfd_remove_devices() to unload one >> function(like uart) and load it as another device like a spi adapter. Is there >> any side effects of doing this in this way? > It gets pretty messy implementation wise. That's one reason why having > separate drivers and binding based on PID is preferable (another is > being able to determine the mode at probe). > > But if this is to be implemented, we probably also do want to be able to > share some code (e.g. for managing the cbus pins as gpios, and that > part could possibly be modelled as an mfd...). > > Then you also have the problem of describing the buses that the FTDI > chip exposes. There's currently no way for example to load a device-tree > overlay from userspace after you configure the mode for, say, spi in > order to register the spi slaves. > > This is also related to what we want to solve for serial-connected > devices (serdev). Using device-tree overlays for this has been > discussed, but there are some missing pieces for that to be realised > (not least a user-space interface for loading overlays). > > Thanks, > Johan
Hi Johan,
Thanks for your reply, now I understand why the mfd doesn't fit.
So this is saying that currently there is not a very proper way of implementing this kind of driver, right? I also noticed that there are other series of chips supporting mutually exclusive multi-functions. I think we quite need a framework for them.
Is there a kind of this framework under development? I'm curious and want to know how everyone thinks about this problem.
yours,
Song Qiang
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