[U-Boot] [PATCH 1/3] net/eth_device: keep index inside each device

[Ben Warren]

Jean-Christophe PLAGNIOL-VILLARD wrote:
> On 20:50 Wed 12 Aug     , Wolfgang Denk wrote:
>   
>> Dear Jean-Christophe PLAGNIOL-VILLARD,
>>
>> In message <1250023747-20224-1-git-send-email-plagnioj at jcrosoft.com> you wrote:
>>     
>>> Signed-off-by: Jean-Christophe PLAGNIOL-VILLARD <plagnioj at jcrosoft.com>
>>> ---
>>>  include/net.h |    1 +
>>>  net/eth.c     |   17 +++++------------
>>>  2 files changed, 6 insertions(+), 12 deletions(-)
>>>       
>> What exactly is the problem you are addressing with this patch?
>>
>> Please provide a commit message that explains what is going on, and
>> what is being changed or fixed.
>>     
> simple it impossible to known what will be your device index in the driver
> specially when you have 2 or more drivers instance once or more
> so you can not update the mac addres in the env if you want to do it
> as we do on smc91111 as we can not known eth%daddr you are
> which allow us the avoid to read the eeprom every time we want to use the eth
>
>   
While I'm not completely opposed to the idea of tracking indices, it's 
simply not true that you don't know the indices of the controllers on 
your board.  They're all instantiated in board_eth_init(), so the first 
will be 0 and the second will be 1 etc.  If you had a mix of devices and 
they were found by probing as in Linux, it would be different.  Here in 
U-boot, ordering is deterministic and dictated by the developer.

BTW - this is hardly the first driver that can have multiple 
instances.   Others, such as TSEC, seem to be managing just fine.

regards,
Ben