Need for VBE helper functions?

Need for VBE helper functions?

[Vesa Jääskeläinen]

Hi,

I have been making video driver for VBE and currently at beginning of
that file there are codes for those VBE helpers defined in
(include/grub/i386/pc/vbe.h). As I had some issues with mixing them with
each other I renamed all kernel stubs like from grub_vbe_* to
grub_vbe_bios_* so they cannot be easily mixed.

I was thinking that is there a still need to have those helper functions
at all there? If they will be there I will use them from driver code, if
not, I will integrate the functionality to driver code. By integrating
the code to driver it would make that driver file more easier to read,
but then we lose option to use those helpers directly. One option is to
move them elsewhere, but then there is a problem what is the module name
and where.

I will update shortly (tomorrow most likely) wiki with results of the
newest API design round. After I think it is correct I will concentrate
on enhancing the terminal code to make use of newly added functionality.

Thanks,
Vesa Jääskeläinen

Re: Need for VBE helper functions?

[Marco Gerards]

Vesa Jääskeläinen <chaac@nic.fi> writes:

Hi Vesa,

> I have been making video driver for VBE and currently at beginning of
> that file there are codes for those VBE helpers defined in
> (include/grub/i386/pc/vbe.h). As I had some issues with mixing them with
> each other I renamed all kernel stubs like from grub_vbe_* to
> grub_vbe_bios_* so they cannot be easily mixed.
>
> I was thinking that is there a still need to have those helper functions
> at all there? If they will be there I will use them from driver code, if
> not, I will integrate the functionality to driver code. By integrating
> the code to driver it would make that driver file more easier to read,
> but then we lose option to use those helpers directly. One option is to
> move them elsewhere, but then there is a problem what is the module name
> and where.

So what you have now is some VBE functions and a video driver and you
are wondering if they should be merged?  I think that shouldn't be
done because multiboot should also use VBE to switch video modes.

> I will update shortly (tomorrow most likely) wiki with results of the
> newest API design round. After I think it is correct I will concentrate
> on enhancing the terminal code to make use of newly added functionality.

Cool!

Thanks,
Marco