Re: [PATCH 1/2] net: phy: add ethtool_phy_{get|set}_link_ksettings

From: Philippe Reynes
Date: Sat May 07 2016 - 18:57:01 EST


On 07/05/16 13:59, Ben Hutchings wrote:
On Sat, 2016-05-07 at 01:18 +0200, Philippe Reynes wrote:
The callback {get|set}_link_ksettings are often defined
in a very close way. There are mainly two differences in
those callback:
- the name of the netdev private structure
- the name of the struct phydev in the private structure

We add two defines ethtool_phy_{get|set}_link_ksettings
to avoid writing severals times almost the same function.
[...]

I don't think there's no need to access a private structure, as there's
a phydev pointer in struct net_device. If some drivers don't maintain
that pointer, they should be changed to do so. Then they can
use generic implementations of {get,set}_link_ksettings provided by
phylib.

If we could use the phydev in the struct net_device, we could write a
generic function for {get|set}_link_ksettings. It's a good idea.

But I've quickly looked and a lot of ethernet driver use the private
structure to store the phydev. If the ethernet driver may use the
struct net_device for phydev, do you know why so many drivers use
the private structure ?

If everybody agree, I can send a new version with a generic {get|set}_link_ksettings
and a update of fec to use the phydev store in the structure net_device.

Philippe