[lm-sensors] Sensors-detect with DMI detection

[khali@linux-fr.org (Jean Delvare)]

Hi Ivo,

On Thu, 22 Mar 2007 11:09:14 +0100, Ivo Manca wrote:
> Just a quick question (again ;)). Is it necesary for us to even think about 
> supporting the 2.4 kernels?
> I'm asking this, because if our addition doesn't get included before 
> libsensors 3.x, it seems like we only get to work with 2.6, isn't it?

Side note: we are already at libsensors 3.x (unfortunately.) What you
refer to is lm-sensors 3.x, for which the libsensors version will be
4.x. Actually I think we should jump to lm-sensors 4.x directly to sync
the lib version with the package version again - but Mark seems to like
lm-sensors 3.x.

> If that is so, we can drop a table in our database. This is because we want 
> to add the kernel versions a configuration is working for. The easiest way 
> to implement this, is to just modify the minimum kernel version for that 
> configuration. If there's no support for 2.4, we can just add a field with 
> the minimum working 2.6 kernel verson, like 2.6.10. Else, we must also 
> register the minimum 2.4 version, either as a field, or with a 
> table/relationship.
> 
> Just wondering :)

We don't really care about 2.4 anymore. If you can support it for free,
alright. If it has a cost, just don't do it.

One thing which you will have to handle though are the syntax changes
to sensors.conf. Two things are going to happen in a (more or less)
near future:

* Mark Hoffman will add support for the "include" statement. Obviously,
the user will need libsensors 4.x if they download a configuration file
which uses such a statement. OTOH, I can't see any reason why an
include statement would be used in the configuration files for
motherboards, so maybe all you have to do is strip any include
statement before storing the configuration file in the database.

* Once the library discovers the device features autmatically,
sensors.conf will have to use the standard feature names, instead of
the custom ones. This means we'll have to fork sensors.conf.eg into an
old-style version and a new-style version. The configuration files
stored in your database will have the same problem - they will work
with either the old library, or the new one, but not both.

Note that it should be possible to translate old-style configuration
files to the new style automatically, using the same translation
rules which are used by libsensors today. A perl script would do. The
other way around is much more difficult, though, as you would need to
write an extensive reverse mapping table for every supported chip.

-- 
Jean Delvare