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linux-next/Documentation/leds/leds-class.txt
Tony Makkiel 7cfe749fad leds: core: Fix brightness setting upon hardware blinking enabled
Commit 76931edd54 ("leds: fix brightness changing when software blinking
is active") changed the semantics of led_set_brightness() which according
to the documentation should disable blinking upon any brightness setting.
Moreover it made it different for soft blink case, where it was possible
to change blink brightness, and for hardware blink case, where setting
any brightness greater than 0 was ignored.

While the change itself is against the documentation claims, it was driven
also by the fact that timer trigger remained active after turning blinking
off. Fixing that would have required major refactoring in the led-core,
led-class, and led-triggers because of cyclic dependencies.

Finally, it has been decided that allowing for brightness change during
blinking is beneficial as it can be accomplished without disturbing
blink rhythm.

The change in brightness setting semantics will not affect existing
LED class drivers that implement blink_set op thanks to the LED_BLINK_SW
flag introduced by this patch. The flag state will be from now on checked
in led_set_brightness() which will allow to distinguish between software
and hardware blink mode. In the latter case the control will be passed
directly to the drivers which apply their semantics on brightness set,
which is disable the blinking in case of most such drivers. New drivers
will apply new semantics and just change the brightness while hardware
blinking is on, if possible.

The issue was smuggled by subsequent LED core improvements, which modified
the code that originally introduced the problem.

Fixes: f1e80c0741 ("leds: core: Add two new LED_BLINK_ flags")
Signed-off-by: Tony Makkiel <tony.makkiel@daqri.com>
Signed-off-by: Jacek Anaszewski <j.anaszewski@samsung.com>
2016-06-08 11:47:06 +02:00

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LED handling under Linux
========================
In its simplest form, the LED class just allows control of LEDs from
userspace. LEDs appear in /sys/class/leds/. The maximum brightness of the
LED is defined in max_brightness file. The brightness file will set the brightness
of the LED (taking a value 0-max_brightness). Most LEDs don't have hardware
brightness support so will just be turned on for non-zero brightness settings.
The class also introduces the optional concept of an LED trigger. A trigger
is a kernel based source of led events. Triggers can either be simple or
complex. A simple trigger isn't configurable and is designed to slot into
existing subsystems with minimal additional code. Examples are the ide-disk,
nand-disk and sharpsl-charge triggers. With led triggers disabled, the code
optimises away.
Complex triggers whilst available to all LEDs have LED specific
parameters and work on a per LED basis. The timer trigger is an example.
The timer trigger will periodically change the LED brightness between
LED_OFF and the current brightness setting. The "on" and "off" time can
be specified via /sys/class/leds/<device>/delay_{on,off} in milliseconds.
You can change the brightness value of a LED independently of the timer
trigger. However, if you set the brightness value to LED_OFF it will
also disable the timer trigger.
You can change triggers in a similar manner to the way an IO scheduler
is chosen (via /sys/class/leds/<device>/trigger). Trigger specific
parameters can appear in /sys/class/leds/<device> once a given trigger is
selected.
Design Philosophy
=================
The underlying design philosophy is simplicity. LEDs are simple devices
and the aim is to keep a small amount of code giving as much functionality
as possible. Please keep this in mind when suggesting enhancements.
LED Device Naming
=================
Is currently of the form:
"devicename:colour:function"
There have been calls for LED properties such as colour to be exported as
individual led class attributes. As a solution which doesn't incur as much
overhead, I suggest these become part of the device name. The naming scheme
above leaves scope for further attributes should they be needed. If sections
of the name don't apply, just leave that section blank.
Brightness setting API
======================
LED subsystem core exposes following API for setting brightness:
- led_set_brightness : it is guaranteed not to sleep, passing LED_OFF stops
blinking,
- led_set_brightness_sync : for use cases when immediate effect is desired -
it can block the caller for the time required for accessing
device registers and can sleep, passing LED_OFF stops hardware
blinking, returns -EBUSY if software blink fallback is enabled.
Hardware accelerated blink of LEDs
==================================
Some LEDs can be programmed to blink without any CPU interaction. To
support this feature, a LED driver can optionally implement the
blink_set() function (see <linux/leds.h>). To set an LED to blinking,
however, it is better to use the API function led_blink_set(), as it
will check and implement software fallback if necessary.
To turn off blinking, use the API function led_brightness_set()
with brightness value LED_OFF, which should stop any software
timers that may have been required for blinking.
The blink_set() function should choose a user friendly blinking value
if it is called with *delay_on==0 && *delay_off==0 parameters. In this
case the driver should give back the chosen value through delay_on and
delay_off parameters to the leds subsystem.
Setting the brightness to zero with brightness_set() callback function
should completely turn off the LED and cancel the previously programmed
hardware blinking function, if any.
Known Issues
============
The LED Trigger core cannot be a module as the simple trigger functions
would cause nightmare dependency issues. I see this as a minor issue
compared to the benefits the simple trigger functionality brings. The
rest of the LED subsystem can be modular.
Future Development
==================
At the moment, a trigger can't be created specifically for a single LED.
There are a number of cases where a trigger might only be mappable to a
particular LED (ACPI?). The addition of triggers provided by the LED driver
should cover this option and be possible to add without breaking the
current interface.