Re: [PATCH] neofb patches

[Otto Solares <solca@guug.org>]

On Fri, Apr 30, 2004 at 01:12:17AM +0200, Michel Dänzer wrote:
> On Thu, 2004-04-29 at 19:52, Otto Solares wrote:
> > On Thu, Apr 29, 2004 at 03:01:13PM +0200, Michel Dänzer wrote:
> > > On Thu, 2004-04-29 at 03:07, Otto Solares wrote:
> > > > On Thu, Apr 29, 2004 at 12:26:41AM +0200, Michel Dänzer wrote:
> > > > 
> > > > > A small low-level driver could handle this, which both the framebuffer
> > > > > device and the DRM use. Linus has proposed this approach, and I must say
> > > > > I like it.
> > > > 
> > > > That should be fbdev without fbcon.
> > > 
> > > I'm not sure that works: keep in mind that the DRM works on other OSs
> > > than Linux, and even on Linux some people may want to use the DRM
> > > without a framebuffer device. Neither should be a problem with a minimal
> > > base driver which does nothing more than hardware resource management
> > > and arbitration.
> > 
> > Differents OSs have differents sources for DRM kernel side so
> > that's not a problem nor will affect others OSs than linux.
> 
> Nope. Most of the code in the DRI CVS drm module is shared between OSs.
> Most of the shared code is hardware specific though, so if you change
> the interface to the hardware, either all the OSs will have to provide
> the new interface, or the code can no longer be shared, which would get
> us back to the code duplication horrors. I'd very much like to avoid
> that.

I don't see your point, nothing prevents using the shared code,
the idea is not to change the interface, just to have a single
graphics layer that handle that same interface.  I know it could be
a pain to duplicate the fbdev into the cvs drm module, but with
proper file separations there could live the fbdev's drm code.

> > Yes, a minimal driver would do the work _NOW_.
> 
> Why wouldn't it in the future?

Because we need a single and unified graphics layer for linux
in the very same way like the sound and input layers exists now.

A proper graphics layer based on fbdev_sysfs + libraries like the
ones Ben or Jon are working on + dri + hotplug + hal + udev + dbus
+ a good graphics servers (based on the unified layer) + toolkits
= a chance for linux to compete in the future with longhorn and
OSX.  The graphics layer I am describing here is low-level and
must contain the basics needed for a graphics server.  I am
working on one but i'm sure it would be useful to any Xserver
like the xserver from fd.o.

-otto



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