Re: [PATCH] libfdt: place new nodes & properties after the parent's ones

From: David Gibson
Date: Mon Feb 10 2020 - 18:44:16 EST


On Mon, Feb 10, 2020 at 12:40:19PM +0100, Marek Szyprowski wrote:
> Hi David,
>
> On 05.02.2020 06:45, David Gibson wrote:
> > On Tue, Feb 04, 2020 at 01:58:44PM +0100, Marek Szyprowski wrote:
> >> While applying dt-overlays using libfdt code, the order of the applied
> >> properties and sub-nodes is reversed. This should not be a problem in
> >> ideal world (mainline), but this matters for some vendor specific/custom
> >> dtb files. This can be easily fixed by the little change to libfdt code:
> >> any new properties and sub-nodes should be added after the parent's node
> >> properties and subnodes.
> >>
> >> Signed-off-by: Marek Szyprowski <m.szyprowski@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> > I'm not convinced this is a good idea.
> >
> > First, anything that relies on the order of properties or subnodes in
> > a dtb is deeply, fundamentally broken. That can't even really be a
> > problem with a dtb file itself, only with the code processing it.
>
> I agree about the properties, but generally the order of nodes usually
> implies the order of creation of some devices or objects.

Huh? From the device tree client's point of view the devices just
exist - the order of creation should not be visible to it.

> This sometimes
> has some side-effects.

If those side effects matter, your code is broken. If you need to
apply an order to nodes, you should be looking at 'reg' or other
properties.

> For comparison, the other lib used for fdt manipulation (libufdt)
> applies overlays in a such way, that the order of properties and nodes
> is not reversed.
>
> > I'm also concerned this could have a negative performance impact,
> > since it has to skip over a bunch of existing things before adding the
> > new one. On the other hand, that may be offset by the fact that it
> > will reduce the amount of stuff that needs to be memmove()ed later on.
>
> This code is already slow (especially in the way the uboot's use it for
> 'fdt apply' command), but in practice I've didn't observe negative
> impact on the performance of applying large overlays at all.

I'm going to need numbers, not just "I didn't see anything".

--
David Gibson | I'll have my music baroque, and my code
david AT gibson.dropbear.id.au | minimalist, thank you. NOT _the_ _other_
| _way_ _around_!
http://www.ozlabs.org/~dgibson

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