Explain when devices should get activated.
Signed-off-by: Michal Suchanek <msucha...@suse.de>
---
doc/develop/driver-model/design.rst | 22 ++++++++++++++++++++--
1 file changed, 20 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
diff --git a/doc/develop/driver-model/design.rst
b/doc/develop/driver-model/design.rst
index 5f33f9fbb3..c925d21b24 100644
--- a/doc/develop/driver-model/design.rst
+++ b/doc/develop/driver-model/design.rst
@@ -794,8 +794,26 @@ fall afoul of this rule.
Activation/probe
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
-When a device needs to be used, U-Boot activates it, by first reading ofdata
-as above and then following these steps (see device_probe()):
+To save resources devices in U-Boot are probed lazily. U-Boot is a bootloader,
+not an operating system. Many devices are never used during an U-Boot run, and
+probing them takes time, requires memory, may add delays to the main loop, etc.
+
+The device should be probed by the uclass code. Different uclasses are
+different but two common use cases can be seen:
+
+ 1. The uclass is asked to look up a specific device, such as SPI bus 0,
+ first chip select - in this case the returned device should be
+ activated.
+
+ 2. The uclass is asked to perform a specific function on any device that
+ supports it, eg. reset the board using any sysreset that can be found -
+ for this case the core uclass code provides iterators that activate
+ each device before returning it, and the uclass typically implements a
+ walk function that iterates over all devices of the uclass and tries
+ to perform the requested function on each in turn until succesful.
+
+To activate a device U-Boot first reads ofdata as above and then follows these
+steps (see device_probe()):
1. All parent devices are probed. It is not possible to activate a device
unless its predecessors (all the way up to the root device) are activated.
--
2.37.1
