How overlays work¶

A Device Tree’s overlay purpose is to modify the kernel’s live tree, andhave the modification affecting the state of the kernel in a way thatis reflecting the changes.Since the kernel mainly deals with devices, any new device node that resultin an active device should have it created while if the device node is eitherdisabled or removed all together, the affected device should be deregistered.

Lets take an example where we have a foo board with the following base tree:

---- foo.dts ---------------------------------------------------------------    /* FOO platform */    /dts-v1/;    / {            compatible = "corp,foo";            /* shared resources */            res: res {            };            /* On chip peripherals */            ocp: ocp {                    /* peripherals that are always instantiated */                    peripheral1 { ... };            };    };---- foo.dts ---------------------------------------------------------------

The overlay bar.dts,

---- bar.dts - overlay target location by label ----------------------------    /dts-v1/;    /plugin/;    &ocp {            /* bar peripheral */            bar {                    compatible = "corp,bar";                    ... /* various properties and child nodes */            };    };---- bar.dts ---------------------------------------------------------------

when loaded (and resolved as described in [1]) should result in foo+bar.dts:

---- foo+bar.dts -----------------------------------------------------------    /* FOO platform + bar peripheral */    / {            compatible = "corp,foo";            /* shared resources */            res: res {            };            /* On chip peripherals */            ocp: ocp {                    /* peripherals that are always instantiated */                    peripheral1 { ... };                    /* bar peripheral */                    bar {                            compatible = "corp,bar";                            ... /* various properties and child nodes */                    };            };    };---- foo+bar.dts -----------------------------------------------------------

As a result of the overlay, a new device node (bar) has been createdso a bar platform device will be registered and if a matching device driveris loaded the device will be created as expected.

If the base DT was not compiled with the -@ option then the “&ocp” labelwill not be available to resolve the overlay node(s) to the proper locationin the base DT. In this case, the target path can be provided. The targetlocation by label syntax is preferred because the overlay can be applied toany base DT containing the label, no matter where the label occurs in the DT.

The above bar.dts example modified to use target path syntax is:

---- bar.dts - overlay target location by explicit path --------------------    /dts-v1/;    /plugin/;    &{/ocp} {            /* bar peripheral */            bar {                    compatible = "corp,bar";                    ... /* various properties and child nodes */            }    };---- bar.dts ---------------------------------------------------------------

Overlay in-kernel API¶

The API is quite easy to use.

1. Call of_overlay_fdt_apply() to create and apply an overlay changeset. Thereturn value is an error or a cookie identifying this overlay.
2. Call of_overlay_remove() to remove and cleanup the overlay changesetpreviously created via the call to of_overlay_fdt_apply(). Removal of anoverlay changeset that is stacked by another will not be permitted.

Finally, if you need to remove all overlays in one-go, just callof_overlay_remove_all() which will remove every single one in the correctorder.

In addition, there is the option to register notifiers that get called onoverlay operations. See of_overlay_notifier_register/unregister andenum of_overlay_notify_action for details.

Note that a notifier callback is not supposed to store pointers to a devicetree node or its content beyond OF_OVERLAY_POST_REMOVE corresponding to therespective node it received.