tree f3c60556cc89e3d2b0611a6219fe5e42d05ad39b
parent 7dedc002c0ec676590bf78ae8d76f2ffd51564f6
author Lars-Peter Clausen <lars@metafoo.de> 1392556882 +0100
committer Vinod Koul <vinod.koul@intel.com> 1394118675 +0530

dma: Remove comment about embedding dma_slave_config into custom structs

The documentation for the dma_slave_config struct recommends that if a DMA
controller has special configuration options, which can not be configured
through the dma_slave_config struct, the driver should create its own custom
config struct and embed the dma_slave_config struct in it and pass the custom
config struct to dmaengine_slave_config(). This overloads the generic
dmaengine_slave_config() API with custom semantics and any caller of the
dmaengine_slave_config() that is not aware of these special semantics will cause
undefined behavior. This means that it is impossible for generic code to make
use of dmaengine_slave_config(). Such a restriction contradicts the very idea of
having a generic API.

E.g. consider the following case of a DMA controller that has an option to
reverse the field polarity of the DMA transfer with the following implementation
for setting the configuration:

	struct my_slave_config {
		struct dma_slave_config config;
		unsigned int field_polarity;
	};

	static int my_dma_controller_slave_config(struct dma_chan *chan,
		struct dma_slave_config *config)
	{
		struct my_slave_config *my_cfg = container_of(config,
				struct my_slave_config, config);

		...
		my_dma_set_field_polarity(chan, my_cfg->field_polarity);
		...
	}

Now a generic user of the dmaengine API might want to configure a DMA channel
for this DMA controller that it obtained using the following code:

	struct dma_slave_config config;

	config.src_addr = ...;
	...
	dmaengine_slave_config(chan, &config);

The call to dmaengine_slave_config() will eventually call into
my_dma_controller_slave_config() which will cast from dma_slave_config to
my_slave_config and then tries to access the field_polarity member. Since the
dma_slave_config struct that was passed in was never embedded into a
my_slave_config struct this attempt will just read random stack garbage and use
that to configure the DMA controller. This is bad. Instead, if a DMA controller
really needs to have custom configuration options, the driver should create a
custom API for it. This makes it very clear that there is a direct dependency
of a user of such an API and the implementer. E.g.:

	int my_dma_set_field_polarity(struct dma_chan *chan,
		unsigned int field_polarity) {
		if (chan->device->dev->driver != &my_dma_controller_driver.driver)
			return -EINVAL;
		...
	}
	EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL(my_dma_set_field_polarity);

Signed-off-by: Lars-Peter Clausen <lars@metafoo.de>
Signed-off-by: Vinod Koul <vinod.koul@intel.com>