xref: /openbmc/linux/drivers/gpio/TODO (revision 2169e6da)
1This is a place for planning the ongoing long-term work in the GPIO
2subsystem.
3
4
5GPIO descriptors
6
7Starting with commit 79a9becda894 the GPIO subsystem embarked on a journey
8to move away from the global GPIO numberspace and toward a decriptor-based
9approach. This means that GPIO consumers, drivers and machine descriptions
10ideally have no use or idea of the global GPIO numberspace that has/was
11used in the inception of the GPIO subsystem.
12
13Work items:
14
15- Convert all GPIO device drivers to only #include <linux/gpio/driver.h>
16
17- Convert all consumer drivers to only #include <linux/gpio/consumer.h>
18
19- Convert all machine descriptors in "boardfiles" to only
20  #include <linux/gpio/machine.h>, the other option being to convert it
21  to a machine description such as device tree, ACPI or fwnode that
22  implicitly does not use global GPIO numbers.
23
24- When this work is complete (will require some of the items in the
25  following ongoing work as well) we can delete the old global
26  numberspace accessors from <linux/gpio.h> and eventually delete
27  <linux/gpio.h> altogether.
28
29
30Get rid of <linux/of_gpio.h>
31
32This header and helpers appeared at one point when there was no proper
33driver infrastructure for doing simpler MMIO GPIO devices and there was
34no core support for parsing device tree GPIOs from the core library with
35the [devm_]gpiod_get() calls we have today that will implicitly go into
36the device tree back-end.
37
38Work items:
39
40- Get rid of struct of_mm_gpio_chip altogether: use the generic  MMIO
41  GPIO for all current users (see below). Delete struct of_mm_gpio_chip,
42  to_of_mm_gpio_chip(), of_mm_gpiochip_add_data(), of_mm_gpiochip_add()
43  of_mm_gpiochip_remove() from the kernel.
44
45- Change all consumer drivers that #include <linux/of_gpio.h> to
46  #include <linux/gpio/consumer.h> and stop doing custom parsing of the
47  GPIO lines from the device tree. This can be tricky and often ivolves
48  changing boardfiles, etc.
49
50- Pull semantics for legacy device tree (OF) GPIO lookups into
51  gpiolib-of.c: in some cases subsystems are doing custom flags and
52  lookups for polarity inversion, open drain and what not. As we now
53  handle this with generic OF bindings, pull all legacy handling into
54  gpiolib so the library API becomes narrow and deep and handle all
55  legacy bindings internally. (See e.g. commits 6953c57ab172,
56  6a537d48461d etc)
57
58- Delete <linux/of_gpio.h> when all the above is complete and everything
59  uses <linux/gpio/consumer.h> or <linux/gpio/driver.h> instead.
60
61
62Collect drivers
63
64Collect GPIO drivers from arch/* and other places that should be placed
65in drivers/gpio/gpio-*. Augment platforms to create platform devices or
66similar and probe a proper driver in the gpiolib subsystem.
67
68In some cases it makes sense to create a GPIO chip from the local driver
69for a few GPIOs. Those should stay where they are.
70
71
72Generic MMIO GPIO
73
74The GPIO drivers can utilize the generic MMIO helper library in many
75cases, and the helper library should be as helpful as possible for MMIO
76drivers. (drivers/gpio/gpio-mmio.c)
77
78Work items:
79
80- Look over and identify any remaining easily converted drivers and
81  dry-code conversions to MMIO GPIO for maintainers to test
82
83- Expand the MMIO GPIO or write a new library for port-mapped I/O
84  helpers (x86 inb()/outb()) and convert port-mapped I/O drivers to use
85  this with dry-coding and sending to maintainers to test
86
87
88GPIOLIB irqchip
89
90The GPIOLIB irqchip is a helper irqchip for "simple cases" that should
91try to cover any generic kind of irqchip cascaded from a GPIO.
92
93- Convert all the GPIOLIB_IRQCHIP users to pass an irqchip template,
94  parent and flags before calling [devm_]gpiochip_add[_data]().
95  Currently we set up the irqchip after setting up the gpiochip
96  using gpiochip_irqchip_add() and gpiochip_set_[chained|nested]_irqchip().
97  This is too complex, so convert all users over to just set up
98  the irqchip before registering the gpio_chip, typical example:
99
100  /* Typical state container with dynamic irqchip */
101  struct my_gpio {
102      struct gpio_chip gc;
103      struct irq_chip irq;
104  };
105
106  int irq; /* from platform etc */
107  struct my_gpio *g;
108  struct gpio_irq_chip *girq
109
110  /* Set up the irqchip dynamically */
111  g->irq.name = "my_gpio_irq";
112  g->irq.irq_ack = my_gpio_ack_irq;
113  g->irq.irq_mask = my_gpio_mask_irq;
114  g->irq.irq_unmask = my_gpio_unmask_irq;
115  g->irq.irq_set_type = my_gpio_set_irq_type;
116
117  /* Get a pointer to the gpio_irq_chip */
118  girq = &g->gc.irq;
119  girq->chip = &g->irq;
120  girq->parent_handler = ftgpio_gpio_irq_handler;
121  girq->num_parents = 1;
122  girq->parents = devm_kcalloc(dev, 1, sizeof(*girq->parents),
123                               GFP_KERNEL);
124  if (!girq->parents)
125      return -ENOMEM;
126  girq->default_type = IRQ_TYPE_NONE;
127  girq->handler = handle_bad_irq;
128  girq->parents[0] = irq;
129
130  When this is done, we will delete the old APIs for instatiating
131  GPIOLIB_IRQCHIP and simplify the code.
132
133- Look over and identify any remaining easily converted drivers and
134  dry-code conversions to gpiolib irqchip for maintainers to test
135
136- Support generic hierarchical GPIO interrupts: these are for the
137  non-cascading case where there is one IRQ per GPIO line, there is
138  currently no common infrastructure for this.
139
140
141Increase integration with pin control
142
143There are already ways to use pin control as back-end for GPIO and
144it may make sense to bring these subsystems closer. One reason for
145creating pin control as its own subsystem was that we could avoid any
146use of the global GPIO numbers. Once the above is complete, it may
147make sense to simply join the subsystems into one and make pin
148multiplexing, pin configuration, GPIO, etc selectable options in one
149and the same pin control and GPIO subsystem.
150