[RFC PATCH 1/2] serial: 8250: Add a notifier chain for driver registration.

[Alan Cox]

On Wed, 16 Mar 2011 18:26:06 -0700
David Daney <ddaney at caviumnetworks.com> wrote:

> The 8250 driver is a bit weird in that in addition to supporting
> platform devices, extra devices can be added by calling
> serial8250_register_port().
> 
> The problem is that if we call serial8250_register_port() before the
> driver is initialized Bad Things happen (we dereference NULL
> pointers).
> 
> There doesn't seem to be a general way to know if a driver has been
> initialized

I've had a bigger dig into this. I think the correct answer is probably
"always go via platform devices or similar". That *is* the notifier in
the kernel of today. serial8250_register_port ultimately should I think
ultimatly become an internal helper.

Alan