Re: [PATCH v3 7/7] gpio: add pinctrl based generic gpio driver

[Linus Walleij]

On Thu, Mar 12, 2026 at 11:41 AM Andy Shevchenko
<andriy.shevchenko@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 11, 2026 at 11:00:02PM +0100, Linus Walleij wrote:

> > What this does is essentially take the gpio-ranges, find the
> > backing pins on the pin controller, and creates a GPIOchip
> > from them.
>
> Thanks for elaboration! But why is it done this way? It doesn't sound
> like a usual (generic) problem to solve.

The experts can confirm, but I think this was done to simplify
the SCMI firmware, both the specification and the implementation.

It was identified that it was necessary to have a pin control
SCMI specification and implementation, but no separate GPIO
specification and implementation was defined, leading to just
one spec, and one single firmware service to
implement that will support both pin control and GPIO.

These days, if we were re-specifying ACPI we could do the
same there, but alas it already has legacy GPIO-only interfaces.
SCMI has the upside of being able to start from scratch
and upend a few traditions.

Yours,
Linus Walleij