MXC I2C recover/idle_bus does not work if CONFIG_DM_I2C is configured

[Trommel, Kees (Contractor)]

Heiko,

When an I2C transaction fails because a previous transaction (by the kernel) was aborted halfway the MXC I2C driver tries to recover from this by calling i2c_idle_bus (if CONFIG_DM_I2C is configured). i2c_idle_bus is defined in drivers/i2c/mxc_i2c.c

As part of the recover procedure i2c_idle_bus (tries) to change the direction of I2C GPIO pins from output to input using the function dm_gpio_set_dir_flags. However dm_gpio_set_dir_flags only sets flags without clearing any previously set flags, see statement "flags |= desc->flags" in dm_gpio_set_dir_flags. Because it is not allowed to set both GPIOD_IS_IN and GPIOD_IS_OUT (see function check_dir_flags) only the dm_gpio_set_dir_flags(GPIO_D_IS_OUT) calls are successful,  the dm_gpio_set_dir_flags(GPIO_D_IS_IN) calls fail and the GPIO pin is never set as an input. This causes that i2c_idle_bus finds that clearing the bus is unsuccessful and returns an error.

Although i2c_idle_bus returns an error the i2c recover procedure itself is successful and the next I2C transfer will be successful. This requires that the I2C application to do a retry. This will work but is not the intention of the I2C driver.

I want to fix this problem. However it looks like that no dm_gpio API exists to change the direction of an GPIO pin while this is required to successful recover the i2c bus and detect that the recovery is successful. To fix this issue I see 2 possibilities:

1. Use the old fashioned APIs gpio_direction_input and gpio_direction_output
2. Add a new dm_gpio API dm_gpio_clear_and_set_dir_flags that allows to clear all existing set flags before setting the new flag(s)

I prefer option 2 but I like to hear the opinion of the developer that designed the dm_gpio interface.

Kind regards,

Kees Trommel.

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