Proposal: new device-tree syntax and semantics for extendinginformation from included dts files

[David Gibson]

On Wed, Oct 13, 2010 at 07:46:57PM -0600, Grant Likely wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 14, 2010 at 11:45:50AM +1100, David Gibson wrote:
> > On Wed, Oct 13, 2010 at 04:41:59PM -0700, Stephen Neuendorffer wrote:
> > > Personally, I hope to avoid replace and remove, since it is difficult to
> > > tell if
> > > assumptions about which nodes may be present in an included file if
> > > parts of the tree
> > > start getting removed.
> > 
> > Hrm, that's a point.  We may want to make a distinction between the
> > operations "delete and give an error if it wasn't there before" and
> > "delete if present".
> 
> We don't know if this is going to be an issue yet.  I suggest start
> with choosing a stance that covers the path of least surprise (or at
> least what we think is the path of least surprise), and add the syntax
> for the other behaviour only if it is actually needed.

Heh, I agree in principle, though I'm not at all sure which is the
least surprising.

> I say that when trying to delete a node, pitch an error (or warning)
> if the target node doesn't exist.  When adding or overriding an node,
> don't worry about whether or not an original exists (current behaviour).

I'm certainly not suggesting a change in current semantics for the
existing add/merge/override behaviour.

-- 
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