[U-Boot] [PATCH v5 15/15] dm: Expand and improve the device lifecycle docs

[Simon Glass]

Hi Jon,

On 11 June 2014 10:19, Jon Loeliger <loeliger at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 10, 2014 at 6:53 PM, Simon Glass <sjg at chromium.org> wrote:
>> The lifecycle of a device is an important part of driver model. Add to the
>> existing documentation and clarify it.
>>
>> Reported-by: Jon Loeliger <jdl at jdl.com>
>>
>> Signed-off-by: Simon Glass <sjg at chromium.org>
>> ---
>> Thanks for Jon Loeliger <jdl at jdl.com> for helping with the text and
>> suggesting improvements.
>>
>> (Jon please comment/adjust to help clarify things further)
>
>
> This is way betterer now.  Thanks!
>
>
> Nit typo:
>
>> +   e. If the driver provides a ofdata_to_platdata() method, then this is
>
> s/a/an/
>
>
>
>> +
>> +   Note: for a U_BOOT_DEVICE() declaration, the platform data is supplied as
>> +   a static pointer and is not allocated. For device tree, the platform
>> +   data is allocated during activation and freed during dectivation,
>> +   typically automatically using platdata_auto_alloc_size. But if that value
>> +   is 0 then U-Boot will not do the allocation/freeing and you will need to
>> +   do this yourself in your ofdata_to_platdata() and remove() methods. This
>> +   difference is tracked by the device's DM_FLAG_ALLOC_PDATA flag.
>
> The first sentence in that paragraph confused me because I knew where it was
> supposed to be headed: namely, the deallocation of the platdata.  So when it
> used the "not allocated" phrase, I was taken aback.
>
> How about something like this instead?:
>
> Note:  Because the platform data for a U_BOOT_DEVICE() is defined with a
> static pointer, it is not de-allocated during the remove() method.  For a device
> instantiated using the device tree data, the platform data will be dynamically
> allocated, and thus needs to be deallocated during the remove() method.
> If the platdata_auto_alloc_size is non-zero, the deallocation happens
> automatically
> within the DM core.  However, when platdata_auto_alloc_size is 0, both the
> allocation (in probe() or preferably ofdata_to_platdata()) and the deallocation
> in remove() are the responsibility of the driver author.

Thanks, this reads well.

>
> If you'd like:
>
> Acked-by: Jon.Loeliger <jdl at jdl.com>
>
> Thanks,
> jdl

Regards,
Simon