Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2007 14:34:51 -0700 From: John-Mark Gurney <gurney_j@resnet.uoregon.edu> To: Dieter <freebsd@sopwith.solgatos.com> Cc: freebsd-drivers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: userspace driver API ? Message-ID: <20070722213451.GA99491@funkthat.com> In-Reply-To: <200707221920.TAA14252@sopwith.solgatos.com> References: <200707221920.TAA14252@sopwith.solgatos.com>
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Dieter wrote this message on Sun, Jul 22, 2007 at 12:20 +0100: > The penguins have developed a "stable" userspace driver > API to allow "most" of a driver to be in userland. > > http://liquidat.wordpress.com/2007/07/21/linux-kernel-2623-to-have-stable-userspace-driver-api/ > > No DMA (yet?). Not for drivers requiring the highest > possible performance. > > It doesn't solve the problems of binary-only drivers. > (security, fixing bugs, CPU arch, ...) > > But if they did a reasonable job (and yes that's a significant if), > it might be useful for many drivers. Perhaps a way to share > drivers between Linux, the BSDs, OS-X, OpenSolaris, ... > > Thoughts? I've been thinking about similar things for a while... Though I have a few concerns... a) a stable API is something that Linus has touted as something that will not happen for Linux, so yes, it's "stable" but can we truely depend upon that? b) w/o direct DMA, it's not as useful, and implementing direct DMA isn't that difficult (I do direct DMA to userland buffers for bktrau and cxd)... c) I'm also interested in emulating a cdev from userland so that we could do something like let userland code "emulate" V4L... I looked at a few of the links, but I didn't see a good man page or document describing how to interface w/ the code posted... It does look insteresting... -- John-Mark Gurney Voice: +1 415 225 5579 "All that I will do, has been done, All that I have, has not."
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