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authorLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>2026-08-24 08:46:03 -0700
committerLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>2026-08-24 08:46:03 -0700
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Merge tag 'pinctrl-v7.3-1' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/linusw/linux-pinctrlgrafted
Pull pin control updates from Linus Walleij: "Core changes: - Use the non-blocking mux_state_try_select() in the generic MUX pin control back-end - Free pin maps on pinctrl_generic_to_map() failure in the core helpers New hardware pin control: - Qualcomm Maili TLMM SoC, PMG1110 PMIC, and Eliza LPASS LPI TLMM SoC (this is for the low power audio, LPASS = Low Power Audio SubSystem portions) - Upboard support on top of the Intel pin controller - Apple T6030 and T6031 support (just compatible strings) - Samsung Exynos 8855 SoC - Mediatek MT6858 SoC - Rockchip RK3308B and RV1106 SoCs - Airoha EN7523 and AN7563 SoCs Improvements: - Qualcomm TLMM GPIOs are unconditionally marked as wakeup capable - Qualcomm improvements on top of the Qualcomm PDC (power domain controller) irqchip improvements from tglx:s tree - Qualcomm IPQ806x and IPQ9650 non-urgent pin grop fixups - The NPCM8xx driver has been put into shape fixing many pin and group definitions - Some non-urgent Tegra 264 pin assignments are fixed up - Some non-urgent fixups to Airoha AN7581 and AN7583 registers and pin assignments, missing features etc" * tag 'pinctrl-v7.3-1' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/linusw/linux-pinctrl: (130 commits) dt-bindings: pinctrl: Convert TI DA850 pupd to DT schema pinctrl: meson: sync some modify from A4 pinctrl: meson: a4: Add input enable pin configuration pinctrl: realtek: rtd1625: remove unused group name spdif_sel pinctrl: realtek: rtd1625: fix base_bit for VE4 GPIO 13 dt-bindings: pinctrl: microchip,pic32mzda-pinctrl: Convert to DT schema Revert "Merge branch 'ib-rsk7204' into devel" pinctrl: rockchip: Add RV1106 pinctrl support dt-bindings: pinctrl: rockchip: Add RV1106 compatible pinctrl: rockchip: Decode drive strength in the get function pinctrl: fix PINCTRL_GENERIC_MUX not always being selectable pinctrl: airoha: add support of an7563 SoC dt-bindings: pinctrl: airoha: add support of an7563 pin controller pinctrl: airoha: try to find chip scu node by phandle first pinctrl: airoha: add support of en7523 SoC dt-bindings: pinctrl: airoha: add support of en7523 pin controller pinctrl: airoha: an7583: add support for olt pinmux pinctrl: airoha: an7583: add support for pon_alt pinmux pinctrl: airoha: an7583: add support for npu_uart pinmux dt-bindings: pinctrl: airoha: an7583: add missed features ...
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+=============================
+Device Driver Design Patterns
+=============================
+
+This document describes a few common design patterns found in device drivers.
+It is likely that subsystem maintainers will ask driver developers to
+conform to these design patterns.
+
+1. State Container
+2. container_of()
+
+
+1. State Container
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+While the kernel contains a few device drivers that assume that they will
+only be probed() once on a certain system (singletons), it is custom to assume
+that the device the driver binds to will appear in several instances. This
+means that the probe() function and all callbacks need to be reentrant.
+
+The most common way to achieve this is to use the state container design
+pattern. It usually has this form::
+
+ struct foo {
+ spinlock_t lock; /* Example member */
+ (...)
+ };
+
+ static int foo_probe(...)
+ {
+ struct foo *foo;
+
+ foo = devm_kzalloc(dev, sizeof(*foo), GFP_KERNEL);
+ if (!foo)
+ return -ENOMEM;
+ spin_lock_init(&foo->lock);
+ (...)
+ }
+
+This will create an instance of struct foo in memory every time probe() is
+called. This is our state container for this instance of the device driver.
+Of course it is then necessary to always pass this instance of the
+state around to all functions that need access to the state and its members.
+
+For example, if the driver is registering an interrupt handler, you would
+pass around a pointer to struct foo like this::
+
+ static irqreturn_t foo_handler(int irq, void *arg)
+ {
+ struct foo *foo = arg;
+ (...)
+ }
+
+ static int foo_probe(...)
+ {
+ struct foo *foo;
+
+ (...)
+ ret = request_irq(irq, foo_handler, 0, "foo", foo);
+ }
+
+This way you always get a pointer back to the correct instance of foo in
+your interrupt handler.
+
+
+2. container_of()
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+Continuing on the above example we add an offloaded work::
+
+ struct foo {
+ spinlock_t lock;
+ struct workqueue_struct *wq;
+ struct work_struct offload;
+ (...)
+ };
+
+ static void foo_work(struct work_struct *work)
+ {
+ struct foo *foo = container_of(work, struct foo, offload);
+
+ (...)
+ }
+
+ static irqreturn_t foo_handler(int irq, void *arg)
+ {
+ struct foo *foo = arg;
+
+ queue_work(foo->wq, &foo->offload);
+ (...)
+ }
+
+ static int foo_probe(...)
+ {
+ struct foo *foo;
+
+ foo->wq = create_singlethread_workqueue("foo-wq");
+ INIT_WORK(&foo->offload, foo_work);
+ (...)
+ }
+
+The design pattern is the same for an hrtimer or something similar that will
+return a single argument which is a pointer to a struct member in the
+callback.
+
+container_of() is a macro defined in <linux/container_of.h>
+
+What container_of() does is to obtain a pointer to the containing struct from
+a pointer to a member by a simple subtraction using the offsetof() macro from
+standard C, which allows something similar to object oriented behaviours.
+Notice that the contained member must not be a pointer, but an actual member
+for this to work.
+
+We can see here that we avoid having global pointers to our struct foo *
+instance this way, while still keeping the number of parameters passed to the
+work function to a single pointer.