[PATCH 1/4] netdev/phy: Handle IEEE802.3 clause 45 Ethernet PHYs

[David Miller]

From: David Daney <ddaney.cavm at gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2012 16:11:23 -0700

> Do you realize that at the time get_phy_device() is called, there is
> no PHY device?  So there can be no attribute, nor are we passing a
> register address.  Neither of these suggestions apply to this
> situation.
> 
> We need to know a priori if it is c22 or c45.  So we need to
> communicate the type somehow to get_phy_device().  I chose an unused
> bit in the addr parameter to do this, another option would be to add a
> separate parameter to get_phy_device() specifying the type.

Then pass it in to the get() routine and store the attribute there
in the device we end up with.

There are many parameters that go into a PHY register access, so
we'll probably some day end up with a descriptor struct that the
caller prepares on-stack to pass into the actual read/write ops
via reference.

> ... and this one too I guess.  Really you and Linus should come to a
> consensus on this one.

We did come up with a consensus, which is that subsystem maintainers
such as myself are at liberty to enforce localized coding style for
the bodies of code they maintain.