[PATCH 3/4] spi: Add OF binding support for SPI busses

[Guennadi Liakhovetski]

On Mon, 19 May 2008, Grant Likely wrote:

> On Mon, May 19, 2008 at 7:17 AM, Guennadi Liakhovetski
> <g.liakhovetski at gmx.de> wrote:
> > On Fri, 16 May 2008, Grant Likely wrote:
> >
> >> +    However, the binding does not attempt to define the specific method for
> >> +    assigning chip select numbers.  Since SPI chip select configuration is
> >> +    flexible and non-standardized, it is left out of this binding with the
> >> +    assumption that board specific platform code will be used to manage
> >> +    chip selects.  Individual drivers can define additional properties to
> >> +    support describing the chip select layout.
> >
> > Yes, this looks like a problem to me. This means, SPI devices will need
> > two bindings - OF and platform?... Maybe define an spi_chipselect
> > OF-binding?
> 
> Actually, spi devices have *neither*.  :-)  They bind to the SPI bus.
> Not the platform bus or of_platform bus.

Right, sorry, your SPI bus driver scans the bus device bindings and 
registers devices on it using spi_of_register_devices().

> But that is Linux internal
> details; this discussion is about device tree bindings.
> 
> Note that I did say that drivers can define additional properties for
> supporting chip select changes as needed.  I'm just not attempting to
> encode them into the formal binding.  There is simply just too many
> different ways to manipulate chip select signals and so I don't feel
> confident trying to define a *common* binding at this moment in time.

Yes, I understand, that physically there can be many ways SPI chipselects 
can be controlled. But I thought there could be a generic way to cover 
them all by defining a separate entry on your SPI bus. Like

+    SPI example for an MPC5200 SPI bus:
+		spi at f00 {
+			#address-cells = <1>;
+			#size-cells = <0>;
+			compatible = "fsl,mpc5200b-spi","fsl,mpc5200-spi";
+			reg = <0xf00 0x20>;
+			interrupts = <2 13 0 2 14 0>;
+			interrupt-parent = <&mpc5200_pic>;
+			eth-switch-cs at 0 {
+				compatible = "oem,cs-type";
+			};
+
+			ethernet-switch at 0 {
+				compatible = "micrel,ks8995m";
+				linux,modalias = "ks8995";
+				max-speed = <1000000>;
+				reg = <0>;
+				cs-parent = <&/.../spi at f00/eth-switch-cs at 0>;
+			};
...
+		};

Then whatever method is used to actually switch the CS, a driver should be 
registered to handle eth-switch-cs at 0, providing the required calls. 
Without such a driver ethernet-switch at 0 will not probe successfully. 
Wouldn't this cover all possible cases? One could even consider actually 
putting SPI devices on SPI chipselect busses, but that won't look very 
elegant:-)

Thanks
Guennadi
---
Guennadi Liakhovetski, Ph.D.
Freelance Open-Source Software Developer