As discussed on mailing list, <0 indicates failure, >=0 indicates number of interfaces found.

Also added blurb about private data

Signed-off-by: Ben Warren biggerbadderben@gmail.com --- doc/README.drivers.eth | 21 +++++++++++++-------- 1 files changed, 13 insertions(+), 8 deletions(-)

diff --git a/doc/README.drivers.eth b/doc/README.drivers.eth index 7f21909..e06d3ad 100644 --- a/doc/README.drivers.eth +++ b/doc/README.drivers.eth @@ -25,9 +25,9 @@ system handling, but ultimately they will call the driver-specific register function which in turn takes care of initializing that particular instance.

Keep in mind that you should code the driver to avoid storing state in global -data as someone might want to hook up two of the same devices to one board. If -the state is maintained as global data, it makes using both of those devices -impossible. +data as someone might want to hook up two of the same devices to one board. +Any such information that is specific to an interface should be stored in a +private, driver-defined data structure and pointed to by eth->priv (see below).

So the call graph at this stage would look something like: board_init() @@ -77,15 +77,20 @@ int ape_register(bd_t *bis, int iobase) miiphy_register(dev->name, ape_mii_read, ape_mii_write); #endif

- return 0; + return 1; }

The exact arguments needed to initialize your device are up to you. If you need to pass more/less arguments, that's fine. You should also add the -prototype for your new register function to include/netdev.h. You might notice -that many drivers seem to use xxx_initialize() rather than xxx_register(). -This is the old naming convention and should be avoided as it causes confusion -with the driver-specific init function. +prototype for your new register function to include/netdev.h. + +The return value for this function should be as follows: +< 0 - failure (hardware failure, not probe failure) +>=0 - number of interfaces detected + +You might notice that many drivers seem to use xxx_initialize() rather than +xxx_register(). This is the old naming convention and should be avoided as it +causes confusion with the driver-specific init function.

Other than locating the MAC address in dedicated hardware storage, you should not touch the hardware in anyway. That step is handled in the driver-specific