Re: [MAINTAINERS SUMMIT] State of dt-bindings and DT source files, and invitation request

[Conor Dooley <conor@kernel.org>]

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On Thu, Sep 12, 2024 at 04:01:20PM +0300, Arınç ÜNAL wrote:
> On 11/09/2024 00:53, Conor Dooley wrote:
> > On Tue, Sep 10, 2024 at 10:46:03AM -0500, Rob Herring wrote:
> > > On Tue, Sep 10, 2024 at 5:53 AM Arınç ÜNAL <arinc.unal@arinc9.com> wrote:
> > > > 
> > > > Hello.
> > > > 
> > > > I maintain the MediaTek DSA subdriver and some devicetree bindings and
> > > > source files for MediaTek hardware.
> > > > 
> > > > I am especially interested in the best practices of maintaining dt-bindings
> > > > and DT source files.
> > > > 
> > > > There's this false impression with some maintainers that, as the
> > > > dt-bindings and the DT source files are being hosted on the Linux
> > > > repository, Linux drivers have influence over the design of bindings or
> > 
> > > > fixing DT source files that did not comply with the bindings.
> > 
> > What does "fixing DT source files that did not comply" have to do with
> > Linux, I'm afraid I do not understand what your point is there. The
> > bindings are the ABI, and fixing incorrect source files would happen
> > regardless of how the project is hosted?
> 
> That's exactly what I think. I had a maintainer that argued otherwise is my
> point. Which is why I want to strengthen the Linux documentation.

On a bunch of older platforms it's pretty common that the bindings were
lacklustre or didn't match the devicetree and kernel source code, and in
those cases (which are almost always text bindings) two outweighs one.
Ordinarily though, if the kernel or dts don't match the binding they get
adjusted, and if there are maintainers resisting this, then point them
our way.

If things have been wrong for enough time for it to affect users,
usually the correct thing to do is fix the kernel to support the
incorrect as well as the correct. The same, however, goes for other
projects: if something long established is being fixed, the other users
need to be accounted for, particularly those that automatically import
from the devicetree-rebasing repository.

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