[PATCH v2 1/6] Add ancillary bus support

[Dan Williams]

On Tue, Oct 6, 2020 at 12:21 PM Leon Romanovsky <leon at kernel.org> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Oct 06, 2020 at 05:41:00PM +0000, Saleem, Shiraz wrote:
> > > Subject: Re: [PATCH v2 1/6] Add ancillary bus support
> > >
> > > On Tue, Oct 06, 2020 at 05:09:09PM +0000, Parav Pandit wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > From: Leon Romanovsky <leon at kernel.org>
> > > > > Sent: Tuesday, October 6, 2020 10:33 PM
> > > > >
> > > > > On Tue, Oct 06, 2020 at 10:18:07AM -0500, Pierre-Louis Bossart wrote:
> > > > > > Thanks for the review Leon.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > > > Add support for the Ancillary Bus, ancillary_device and ancillary_driver.
> > > > > > > > It enables drivers to create an ancillary_device and bind an
> > > > > > > > ancillary_driver to it.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > I was under impression that this name is going to be changed.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > It's part of the opens stated in the cover letter.
> > > > >
> > > > > ok, so what are the variants?
> > > > > system bus (sysbus), sbsystem bus (subbus), crossbus ?
> > > > Since the intended use of this bus is to
> > > > (a) create sub devices that represent 'functional separation' and
> > > > (b) second use case for subfunctions from a pci device,
> > > >
> > > > I proposed below names in v1 of this patchset.
> > > >
> > > > (a) subdev_bus
> > >
> > > It sounds good, just can we avoid "_" in the name and call it subdev?
> > >
> >
> > What is wrong with naming the bus 'ancillary bus'? I feel it's a fitting name.
> > An ancillary software bus for ancillary devices carved off a parent device registered on a primary bus.
>
> Greg summarized it very well, every internal conversation about this patch
> with my colleagues (non-english speakers) starts with the question:
> "What does ancillary mean?"
> https://lore.kernel.org/alsa-devel/20201001071403.GC31191@kroah.com/
>
> "For non-native english speakers this is going to be rough,
> given that I as a native english speaker had to go look up
> the word in a dictionary to fully understand what you are
> trying to do with that name."

I suggested "auxiliary" in another splintered thread on this question.
In terms of what the kernel is already using:

$ git grep auxiliary | wc -l
507
$ git grep ancillary | wc -l
153

Empirically, "auxiliary" is more common and closely matches the
intended function of these devices relative to their parent device.