Re: [patch/rfc 2.6.19-rc5] arch-neutral GPIO calls

From: H. Peter Anvin
Date: Sat Nov 11 2006 - 20:33:21 EST


David Brownell wrote:

- Only intended for use with "real" GPIOs that work from IRQ context;
e.g. pins on a SOC that are controlled by chip register access.

- Doesn't handle I2C or SPI based GPIOs. I think we actually need
a different API for those "message based" GPIOs, where synchronous
get/set requires sleeping (and is thus unusable from IRQ context).
That API could be used for "real" GPIOs; the converse is not true.

- No IORESOURCE_GPIO resource type (could be added though).

- Can be trivially implemented today, on many systems (see partial
list above) ... no "provider" or gpiochip API necessary.

- Provided in the form of a working patch, with sample implementation;
known to be viable on multiple architectures and platforms.

- Includes Documentation/gpio.txt

Comments?


If this is done, I think it's essential that a "high-level" API (one that supports message-based GPIO) is provided at the same time. The "high-level" API should be able to address the GPIOs addressed by the low-level API. What we do *not* want is a bunch of stuff using the low-level API when the high-level API would work.

-hpa
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