Hi Lee, Andy,
> Subject: Re: [PATCH v4 1/3] mfd: Add new mfd device TPS68470
>
> On Wed, Jul 26, 2017 at 11:23 AM, Lee Jones <[email protected]> wrote:
> > On Tue, 25 Jul 2017, Andy Shevchenko wrote:
> >> On Tue, Jul 25, 2017 at 12:10 PM, Lee Jones <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> >> I briefly checked few ->read() and ->write() implementations and
> >> didn't find any evidence of positive numbers that can be returned.
> >> Documentation (kernel doc) doesn't shed a light on that. So, to me it
> >> sounds unspecified.
> >>
> >> So, for now (until documentation will be fixed) I would rely on if
> >> (ret < 0)
> >
> > It's not unspecified. The regmap methods call into regcache_write(),
> > where the kerneldoc is clear.
>
Since, we are interested in the regmap for the I2C bus here, I looked into the
implementation of
__devm_regmap_init()
__regmap_init()
regcache_init()
for I2C bus.
At the end of __devm_regmap_init() call from devm_regmap_init_i2c() inside
tps68470_probe(), I see that both cache_bypass and defer_caching flags of i2c
regmap struct are set. So, it looks regcache_write/read calls do not come into
play here.
So, regmap_write()
_regmap_write()
map->reg_write (drivers/base/regmap/regmap.c:1665) translates to
regmap_i2c_write(drivers/base/regmap/regmap-i2c.c:128)
These checks in regmap_i2c_write() ensure all return values from
i2c_master_send() other than the requested number of bytes to write, are
converted into negative values.
if (ret == count)
return 0;
else if (ret < 0)
return ret;
else
return -EIO;
Similar argument goes for regmap_read() as well.
With that, for regmap over I2C bus, it sounds like 'if (ret < 0)' looks to be a
better choice. Please see if I missed anything here.
> drivers/base/regmap/regcache.c:266
>
> " * Return a negative value on failure, 0 on success."
>
> I can hardly find this any cleaner than "unspecified".
>
> > Perhaps we can also change the regmap kerneldoc headers too to match,
> > which might lessen the disparity.
>
> I'm not familiar with the guts of regmap API, so, I would stick with if (ret
> < 0)
> for now until documentation specifies positive return values.
>
Ack
