GPIO Descriptor Driver Interface
================================

This document serves as a guide for GPIO chip drivers writers. Note that it
describes the new descriptor-based interface. For a description of the
deprecated integer-based GPIO interface please refer to gpio-legacy.txt.

Each GPIO controller driver needs to include the following header, which defines
the structures used to define a GPIO driver:

	#include <linux/gpio/driver.h>


Internal Representation of GPIOs
================================

Inside a GPIO driver, individual GPIOs are identified by their hardware number,
which is a unique number between 0 and n, n being the number of GPIOs managed by
the chip. This number is purely internal: the hardware number of a particular
GPIO descriptor is never made visible outside of the driver.

On top of this internal number, each GPIO also need to have a global number in
the integer GPIO namespace so that it can be used with the legacy GPIO
interface. Each chip must thus have a "base" number (which can be automatically
assigned), and for each GPIO the global number will be (base + hardware number).
Although the integer representation is considered deprecated, it still has many
users and thus needs to be maintained.

So for example one platform could use numbers 32-159 for GPIOs, with a
controller defining 128 GPIOs at a "base" of 32 ; while another platform uses
numbers 0..63 with one set of GPIO controllers, 64-79 with another type of GPIO
controller, and on one particular board 80-95 with an FPGA. The numbers need not
be contiguous; either of those platforms could also use numbers 2000-2063 to
identify GPIOs in a bank of I2C GPIO expanders.


Controller Drivers: gpio_chip
=============================

In the gpiolib framework each GPIO controller is packaged as a "struct
gpio_chip" (see linux/gpio/driver.h for its complete definition) with members
common to each controller of that type:

 - methods to establish GPIO direction
 - methods used to access GPIO values
 - method to return the IRQ number associated to a given GPIO
 - flag saying whether calls to its methods may sleep
 - optional debugfs dump method (showing extra state like pullup config)
 - optional base number (will be automatically assigned if omitted)
 - label for diagnostics and GPIOs mapping using platform data

The code implementing a gpio_chip should support multiple instances of the
controller, possibly using the driver model. That code will configure each
gpio_chip and issue gpiochip_add(). Removing a GPIO controller should be rare;
use gpiochip_remove() when it is unavoidable.

Most often a gpio_chip is part of an instance-specific structure with state not
exposed by the GPIO interfaces, such as addressing, power management, and more.
Chips such as codecs will have complex non-GPIO state.

Any debugfs dump method should normally ignore signals which haven't been
requested as GPIOs. They can use gpiochip_is_requested(), which returns either
NULL or the label associated with that GPIO when it was requested.

Locking IRQ usage
-----------------
Input GPIOs can be used as IRQ signals. When this happens, a driver is requested
to mark the GPIO as being used as an IRQ:

	int gpiod_lock_as_irq(struct gpio_desc *desc)

This will prevent the use of non-irq related GPIO APIs until the GPIO IRQ lock
is released:

	void gpiod_unlock_as_irq(struct gpio_desc *desc)