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Commit 90887db8 authored by Linus Walleij's avatar Linus Walleij
Browse files

gpio: document gpio irqchips a bit more, describe helpers



This adds some documentation about the GPIO irqchips, what types
exist etc.

Acked-by: default avatarAlexandre Courbot <acourbot@nvidia.com>
Signed-off-by: default avatarLinus Walleij <linus.walleij@linaro.org>
parent cf42f1cf
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@@ -73,6 +73,65 @@ The IRQ portions of the GPIO block are implemented using an irqchip, using
the header <linux/irq.h>. So basically such a driver is utilizing two sub-
systems simultaneously: gpio and irq.

GPIO irqchips usually fall in one of two categories:

* CHAINED GPIO irqchips: these are usually the type that is embedded on
  an SoC. This means that there is a fast IRQ handler for the GPIOs that
  gets called in a chain from the parent IRQ handler, most typically the
  system interrupt controller. This means the GPIO irqchip is registered
  using irq_set_chained_handler() or the corresponding
  gpiochip_set_chained_irqchip() helper function, and the GPIO irqchip
  handler will be called immediately from the parent irqchip, while
  holding the IRQs disabled. The GPIO irqchip will then end up calling
  something like this sequence in its interrupt handler:

  static irqreturn_t tc3589x_gpio_irq(int irq, void *data)
      chained_irq_enter(...);
      generic_handle_irq(...);
      chained_irq_exit(...);

  Chained GPIO irqchips typically can NOT set the .can_sleep flag on
  struct gpio_chip, as everything happens directly in the callbacks.

* NESTED THREADED GPIO irqchips: these are off-chip GPIO expanders and any
  other GPIO irqchip residing on the other side of a sleeping bus. Of course
  such drivers that need slow bus traffic to read out IRQ status and similar,
  traffic which may in turn incur other IRQs to happen, cannot be handled
  in a quick IRQ handler with IRQs disabled. Instead they need to spawn a
  thread and then mask the parent IRQ line until the interrupt is handled
  by the driver. The hallmark of this driver is to call something like
  this in its interrupt handler:

  static irqreturn_t tc3589x_gpio_irq(int irq, void *data)
      ...
      handle_nested_irq(irq);

  The hallmark of threaded GPIO irqchips is that they set the .can_sleep
  flag on struct gpio_chip to true, indicating that this chip may sleep
  when accessing the GPIOs.

To help out in handling the set-up and management of GPIO irqchips and the
associated irqdomain and resource allocation callbacks, the gpiolib has
some helpers that can be enabled by selecting the GPIOLIB_IRQCHIP Kconfig
symbol:

* gpiochip_irqchip_add(): adds an irqchip to a gpiochip. It will pass
  the struct gpio_chip* for the chip to all IRQ callbacks, so the callbacks
  need to embed the gpio_chip in its state container and obtain a pointer
  to the container using container_of().
  (See Documentation/driver-model/design-patterns.txt)

* gpiochip_set_chained_irqchip(): sets up a chained irq handler for a
  gpio_chip from a parent IRQ and passes the struct gpio_chip* as handler
  data. (Notice handler data, since the irqchip data is likely used by the
  parent irqchip!) This is for the chained type of chip.

To use the helpers please keep the following in mind:

- Make sure to assign all relevant members of the struct gpio_chip so that
  the irqchip can initialize. E.g. .dev and .can_sleep shall be set up
  properly.

It is legal for any IRQ consumer to request an IRQ from any irqchip no matter
if that is a combined GPIO+IRQ driver. The basic premise is that gpio_chip and
irq_chip are orthogonal, and offering their services independent of each