During the process of update of one of the device drivers that are part of
mcb bus (gpio-menz127.c), Krzysztof from GPIO subsystem asked me
why I was adding new MODULE_ALIAS when I also added the same new
information on MODULE_DEVICE_TABLE.

You can find the messages here:

https://lore.kernel.org/linux-gpio/80a20b13-7c6a-4483-9741-568424f957ef@kernel.org/

After a deeper analysis, I came across that the mcb_table_id defined inside
MODULE_DEVICE_TABLE on all device drivers was being ignored as modpost was
not processing the mcb MODULE_DEVICE_TABLE entries. For this reason, former
contributors were using MODULE_ALIAS for enabling mcb to autoload the
device drivers.

My proposal with these changes is to complete the mcb bus by adding
modpost support for processing mcb MODULE_DEVICE_TABLE.

Once this patch is merged, I will send patches one by one for removing
MODULE_ALIAS from all device drivers as they are no longer needed
(as Andy Shevchenko suggested in v1 review).

---
Changes in v2:

- Place "mcb" before "mei" to follow the order.
- Send changes for mcb drivers in a per-driver basis.

Jose Javier Rodriguez Barbarin (1):
  mcb: Add missing modpost build support

 scripts/mod/devicetable-offsets.c | 3 +++
 scripts/mod/file2alias.c          | 9 +++++++++
 2 files changed, 12 insertions(+)

-- 
2.51.1

On Mon, Dec 01, 2025 at 05:07:19PM +0100, Jose Javier Rodriguez Barbarin wrote:
> During the process of update of one of the device drivers that are part of
> mcb bus (gpio-menz127.c), Krzysztof from GPIO subsystem asked me
> why I was adding new MODULE_ALIAS when I also added the same new
> information on MODULE_DEVICE_TABLE.
> 
> You can find the messages here:
> 
> https://lore.kernel.org/linux-gpio/80a20b13-7c6a-4483-9741-568424f957ef@kernel.org/
> 
> After a deeper analysis, I came across that the mcb_table_id defined inside
> MODULE_DEVICE_TABLE on all device drivers was being ignored as modpost was
> not processing the mcb MODULE_DEVICE_TABLE entries. For this reason, former
> contributors were using MODULE_ALIAS for enabling mcb to autoload the
> device drivers.
> 
> My proposal with these changes is to complete the mcb bus by adding
> modpost support for processing mcb MODULE_DEVICE_TABLE.
> 
> Once this patch is merged, I will send patches one by one for removing
> MODULE_ALIAS from all device drivers as they are no longer needed
> (as Andy Shevchenko suggested in v1 review).

Not sure if we need a cover letter for a single change, but yes, this
what I think the best approach and code wise it's fine to me:

Reviewed-by: Andy Shevchenko <andriy.shevchenko@intel.com>

(but we still need a Fixes tag I assume).

-- 
With Best Regards,
Andy Shevchenko

On Mon, Dec 01, 2025 at 08:04:45PM +0200, Andy Shevchenko wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 01, 2025 at 05:07:19PM +0100, Jose Javier Rodriguez Barbarin wrote:
> > During the process of update of one of the device drivers that are part of
> > mcb bus (gpio-menz127.c), Krzysztof from GPIO subsystem asked me
> > why I was adding new MODULE_ALIAS when I also added the same new
> > information on MODULE_DEVICE_TABLE.
> > 
> > You can find the messages here:
> > 
> > https://lore.kernel.org/linux-gpio/80a20b13-7c6a-4483-9741-568424f957ef@kernel.org/
> > 
> > After a deeper analysis, I came across that the mcb_table_id defined inside
> > MODULE_DEVICE_TABLE on all device drivers was being ignored as modpost was
> > not processing the mcb MODULE_DEVICE_TABLE entries. For this reason, former
> > contributors were using MODULE_ALIAS for enabling mcb to autoload the
> > device drivers.
> > 
> > My proposal with these changes is to complete the mcb bus by adding
> > modpost support for processing mcb MODULE_DEVICE_TABLE.
> > 
> > Once this patch is merged, I will send patches one by one for removing
> > MODULE_ALIAS from all device drivers as they are no longer needed
> > (as Andy Shevchenko suggested in v1 review).
> 
> Not sure if we need a cover letter for a single change, but yes, this
> what I think the best approach and code wise it's fine to me:
> 
> Reviewed-by: Andy Shevchenko <andriy.shevchenko@intel.com>
> 
> (but we still need a Fixes tag I assume).

Yes, I also though that a cover letter for a single patch could be a bit
useless but I wanted to explain myself the changes from v1 to v2.

I think now I understood why I should include the fixes tag in the
commit message. Let me send v3 with fixes tag and without a cover letter.

Best regards,

Javier R.

> 
> -- 
> With Best Regards,
> Andy Shevchenko
> 
>