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

[Rob Herring <robherring2@gmail.com>]

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.
>
> I'd be very interested to be involved in or kick start the efforts to take
> dt-bindings and DT source files out of the Linux repository into its own,
> separate repository. I believe, this would be a great step in addressing
> all the project-dependent bindings of Linux, U-Boot, OpenWrt, and all other
> projects, to have a single, unified repository to describe all the hardware
> that exists in the world.

This! This is precisely why we don't move things out of the kernel.
The kernel is the location that has the most hardware support in the
world by far. It is not even close. Really, the only h/w missing are
things too small to run Linux. And with all that h/w support, comes
the people who understand the various classes of h/w. Those people are
not going to come along to a separate project. It would be more work
and there aren't any maintainers looking for extra work.

We already have a separate repository[1]. U-boot has recently
incorporated it and is happily (AFAIK) using it. It happens to be
generated from the kernel tree, but what doesn't work for you there?
I'm happy to discuss what it needs to work better.

> I am already working towards this goal by
> improving the dt-bindings and DT source files on the Linux repository
> whenever I can.

That's great, still plenty of work to do there no matter what
repository is hosting it.

> I must be quite late to make a topic suggestion but I'd be very happy to be
> able to attend to the maintainers summit. I've already registered for the
> Linux Plumbers Conference 2024.

This is probably not a maintainers summit topic. There's a DT BoF
scheduled already that Krzysztof is running and supporting other
projects is on the agenda already. I won't be there in person nor will
I be awake at the scheduled time.

Rob

[1] https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/devicetree/devicetree-rebasing.git/