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+This is a place for planning the ongoing long-term work in the GPIO
+subsystem.
+
+===============================================================================
+
+GPIO descriptors
+
+Starting with commit 79a9becda894 the GPIO subsystem embarked on a journey
+to move away from the global GPIO numberspace and toward a descriptor-based
+approach. This means that GPIO consumers, drivers and machine descriptions
+ideally have no use or idea of the global GPIO numberspace that has/was
+used in the inception of the GPIO subsystem.
+
+The numberspace issue is the same as to why irq is moving away from irq
+numbers to IRQ descriptors.
+
+The underlying motivation for this is that the GPIO numberspace has become
+unmanageable: machine board files tend to become full of macros trying to
+establish the numberspace at compile-time, making it hard to add any numbers
+in the middle (such as if you missed a pin on a chip) without the numberspace
+breaking.
+
+Machine descriptions such as device tree or ACPI does not have a concept of the
+Linux GPIO number as those descriptions are external to the Linux kernel
+and treat GPIO lines as abstract entities.
+
+The runtime-assigned GPIO numberspace (what you get if you assign the GPIO
+base as -1 in struct gpio_chip) has also became unpredictable due to factors
+such as probe ordering and the introduction of -EPROBE_DEFER making probe
+ordering of independent GPIO chips essentially unpredictable, as their base
+number will be assigned on a first come first serve basis.
+
+The best way to get out of the problem is to make the global GPIO numbers
+unimportant by simply not using them. GPIO descriptors deal with this.
+
+Work items:
+
+- Convert all GPIO device drivers to only #include <linux/gpio/driver.h>
+
+- Convert all consumer drivers to only #include <linux/gpio/consumer.h>
+
+- Convert all machine descriptors in "boardfiles" to only
+  #include <linux/gpio/machine.h>, the other option being to convert it
+  to a machine description such as device tree, ACPI or fwnode that
+  implicitly does not use global GPIO numbers.
+
+- Fix drivers to not read back struct gpio_chip::base. Some drivers do
+  that and would be broken by attempts to poison it or make it dynamic.
+  Example in AT91 pinctrl driver:
+  https://lore.kernel.org/all/1d00c056-3d61-4c22-bedd-3bae0bf1ddc4@pengutronix.de/
+  This particular driver is also DT-only, so with the above fixed, the
+  base can be made dynamic (set to -1) if CONFIG_GPIO_SYSFS is disabled.
+
+- When this work is complete (will require some of the items in the
+  following ongoing work as well) we can delete the old global
+  numberspace accessors from <linux/gpio.h> and eventually delete
+  <linux/gpio.h> altogether.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Get rid of <linux/of_gpio.h>
+
+This header and helpers appeared at one point when there was no proper
+driver infrastructure for doing simpler MMIO GPIO devices and there was
+no core support for parsing device tree GPIOs from the core library with
+the [devm_]gpiod_get() calls we have today that will implicitly go into
+the device tree back-end. It is legacy and should not be used in new code.
+
+Work items:
+
+- Change all consumer drivers that #include <linux/of_gpio.h> to
+  #include <linux/gpio/consumer.h> and stop doing custom parsing of the
+  GPIO lines from the device tree. This can be tricky and often involves
+  changing board files, etc.
+
+- Pull semantics for legacy device tree (OF) GPIO lookups into
+  gpiolib-of.c: in some cases subsystems are doing custom flags and
+  lookups for polarity inversion, open drain and what not. As we now
+  handle this with generic OF bindings, pull all legacy handling into
+  gpiolib so the library API becomes narrow and deep and handle all
+  legacy bindings internally. (See e.g. commits 6953c57ab172,
+  6a537d48461d etc)
+
+- Delete <linux/of_gpio.h> when all the above is complete and everything
+  uses <linux/gpio/consumer.h> or <linux/gpio/driver.h> instead.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Collect drivers
+
+Collect GPIO drivers from arch/* and other places that should be placed
+in drivers/gpio/gpio-*. Augment platforms to create platform devices or
+similar and probe a proper driver in the gpiolib subsystem.
+
+In some cases it makes sense to create a GPIO chip from the local driver
+for a few GPIOs. Those should stay where they are.
+
+At the same time it makes sense to get rid of code duplication in existing or
+new coming drivers. For example, gpio-ml-ioh should be incorporated into
+gpio-pch.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Generic MMIO GPIO
+
+The GPIO drivers can utilize the generic MMIO helper library in many
+cases, and the helper library should be as helpful as possible for MMIO
+drivers. (drivers/gpio/gpio-mmio.c)
+
+Work items:
+
+- Look over and identify any remaining easily converted drivers and
+  dry-code conversions to MMIO GPIO for maintainers to test
+
+- Expand the MMIO GPIO or write a new library for regmap-based I/O
+  helpers for GPIO drivers on regmap that simply use offsets
+  0..n in some register to drive GPIO lines
+
+- Expand the MMIO GPIO or write a new library for port-mapped I/O
+  helpers (x86 inb()/outb()) and convert port-mapped I/O drivers to use
+  this with dry-coding and sending to maintainers to test
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Generic regmap GPIO
+
+In the very similar way to Generic MMIO GPIO convert the users which can
+take advantage of using regmap over direct IO accessors. Note, even in
+MMIO case the regmap MMIO with gpio-regmap.c is preferable over gpio-mmio.c.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+GPIOLIB irqchip
+
+The GPIOLIB irqchip is a helper irqchip for "simple cases" that should
+try to cover any generic kind of irqchip cascaded from a GPIO.
+
+- Look over and identify any remaining easily converted drivers and
+  dry-code conversions to gpiolib irqchip for maintainers to test
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Moving over to immutable irq_chip structures
+
+Most of the gpio chips implementing interrupt support rely on gpiolib
+intercepting some of the irq_chip callbacks, preventing the structures
+from being made read-only and forcing duplication of structures that
+should otherwise be unique.
+
+The solution is to call into the gpiolib code when needed (resource
+management, enable/disable or unmask/mask callbacks), and to let the
+core code know about that by exposing a flag (IRQCHIP_IMMUTABLE) in
+the irq_chip structure. The irq_chip structure can then be made unique
+and const.
+
+A small number of drivers have been converted (pl061, tegra186, msm,
+amd, apple), and can be used as examples of how to proceed with this
+conversion. Note that drivers using the generic irqchip framework
+cannot be converted yet, but watch this space!
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Remove legacy sysfs features
+
+We have two parallel per-chip class devices and per-exported-line attribute
+groups in sysfs. One is using the obsolete global GPIO numberspace and the
+second relies on hardware offsets of pins within the chip. Remove the former
+once user-space has switched to using the latter.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Remove GPIOD_FLAGS_BIT_NONEXCLUSIVE
+
+GPIOs in the linux kernel are meant to be an exclusive resource. This means
+that the GPIO descriptors (the software representation of the hardware concept)
+are not reference counted and - in general - only one user at a time can
+request a GPIO line and control its settings. The consumer API is designed
+around full control of the line's state as evidenced by the fact that, for
+instance, gpiod_set_value() does indeed drive the line as requested, instead
+of bumping an enable counter of some sort.
+
+A problematic use-case for GPIOs is when two consumers want to use the same
+descriptor independently. An example of such a user is the regulator subsystem
+which may instantiate several struct regulator_dev instances containing
+a struct device but using the same enable GPIO line.
+
+A workaround was introduced in the form of the GPIOD_FLAGS_BIT_NONEXCLUSIVE
+flag but its implementation is problematic: it does not provide any
+synchronization of usage nor did it introduce any enable count meaning the
+non-exclusive users of the same descriptor will in fact "fight" for the
+control over it. This flag should be removed and replaced with a better
+solution, possibly based on the new power sequencing subsystem.
+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Remove devm_gpiod_unhinge()
+
+devm_gpiod_unhinge() is provided as a way to transfer the ownership of managed
+enable GPIOs to the regulator core. Rather than doing that however, we should
+make it possible for the regulator subsystem to deal with GPIO resources the
+lifetime of which it doesn't control as logically, a GPIO obtained by a caller
+should also be freed by it.