RE: [PATCH] max17042_battery: add support for battery STATUS andCHARGE_TYPE

[Pallala, Ramakrishna]

> On Fri, Jul 27, 2012 at 10:26:21PM +0530, Ramakrishna Pallala wrote:
> > This patch adds the support to report the battery power supply
> > attributes STATUS and CHARGE_TYPE. This patch makes use of
> > power_supply_get_external_attr() API to get these attributes through power
> supply core.
> >
> > Signed-off-by: Ramakrishna Pallala <ramakrishna.pallala@xxxxxxxxx>
> > ---
> [...]
> >  	switch (psp) {
> > +	case POWER_SUPPLY_PROP_STATUS:
> > +		ret = power_supply_get_external_attr(&query);
> > +		if (ret < 0)
> > +			return ret;
> > +		val->intval = query.res.intval;
> > +		break;
> 
> First of, thanks a lot for your work. And sorry that it took me quite a while to
> review it, but these are fundamental changes, so I had to thoughtfully consider
> all this.
> 
> This exact code clearly shows that it is not battery's property. Battery itself
> cannot report it, right? OK, here is what
> Documentation/power/power_supply_class.txt says:
> 
> A: Most likely, no. This class is designed to export properties which are
>    directly measurable by the specific hardware available.
> 
>    Inferring not available properties using some heuristics or mathematical
>    model is not subject of work for a battery driver. Such functionality
>    should be factored out
> 
> So, you basically try to infer battery's properties from the charger hw.
> This is surely doable, but no, I think we should not do this. Instead, what we
> want is to make use of "supplied_to" mechanism of the power supply class, and
> export it via sysfs. Then userland can see all the power supply hierarchy, and
> thus see which hardware provides which data.
> 
> See my thoughts about exporting "supplied_to" to the sysfs:
> 
> 	http://lkml.org/lkml/2011/6/22/258
> 
> So, we'll have:
> 
> /sys/
>    class/
>       power_supply/
>          charger/
>             supplied_to/battery -> ../../battery
>          battery/
> 
> Sure, we'll have to teach userland to operate on this scheme, i.e.
> it must be aware that batteries might be connected to an external charger, and
> if so, userland must query* charging status from the charger.
> 
> Do you see any problem with this approach?
> 
> Thanks!

Got your point. I will try this approach.
Thanks for your time :-)

Thanks,
Ram
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