When the SPI core registers the Kunpeng controller it may need to acquire
chip-select GPIO descriptors. If the GPIO provider has not probed yet,
spi_register_controller() returns -EPROBE_DEFER.

On a Kunpeng system this currently prints an alarming error even though the
next deferred-probe retry succeeds:

  hisi-kunpeng-spi HISI03E1:00: failed to register spi host, ret=-517
  hisi-kunpeng-spi HISI03E1:00: hw version:0x30 max-freq:12500 kHz

Use dev_err_probe() so that -EPROBE_DEFER is reported through the deferred
probe mechanism instead of as a hard error, while preserving normal error
reporting for real registration failures.

Fixes: c770d8631e18 ("spi: Add HiSilicon SPI Controller Driver for Kunpeng SoCs")

Signed-off-by: Qiang Ma <maqianga@uniontech.com>
---
 drivers/spi/spi-hisi-kunpeng.c | 6 ++----
 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)

diff --git a/drivers/spi/spi-hisi-kunpeng.c b/drivers/spi/spi-hisi-kunpeng.c
index 046bd894040b..395214b81179 100644
--- a/drivers/spi/spi-hisi-kunpeng.c
+++ b/drivers/spi/spi-hisi-kunpeng.c
@@ -520,10 +520,8 @@ static int hisi_spi_probe(struct platform_device *pdev)
 	}
 
 	ret = spi_register_controller(host);
-	if (ret) {
-		dev_err(dev, "failed to register spi host, ret=%d\n", ret);
-		return ret;
-	}
+	if (ret)
+		return dev_err_probe(dev, ret, "failed to register spi host\n");
 
 	if (hisi_spi_debugfs_init(hs))
 		dev_info(dev, "failed to create debugfs dir\n");
-- 
2.20.1

On Fri, 15 May 2026 18:26:20 +0800, Qiang Ma wrote:
> spi: hisi-kunpeng: Use dev_err_probe() for host registration failure

Applied to

   https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/broonie/spi.git for-7.2

Thanks!

[1/1] spi: hisi-kunpeng: Use dev_err_probe() for host registration failure
      https://git.kernel.org/broonie/spi/c/59b991990a04

All being well this means that it will be integrated into the linux-next
tree (usually sometime in the next 24 hours) and sent to Linus during
the next merge window (or sooner if it is a bug fix), however if
problems are discovered then the patch may be dropped or reverted.

You may get further e-mails resulting from automated or manual testing
and review of the tree, please engage with people reporting problems and
send followup patches addressing any issues that are reported if needed.

If any updates are required or you are submitting further changes they
should be sent as incremental updates against current git, existing
patches will not be replaced.

Please add any relevant lists and maintainers to the CCs when replying
to this mail.

Thanks,
Mark