From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-path: Received: from lb3-smtp-cloud3.xs4all.net ([194.109.24.30]:33670 "EHLO lb3-smtp-cloud3.xs4all.net" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1750796AbbJTGZM (ORCPT ); Tue, 20 Oct 2015 02:25:12 -0400 Message-ID: <5625DDCA.2040203@xs4all.nl> Date: Tue, 20 Oct 2015 08:23:06 +0200 From: Hans Verkuil MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Ran Shalit , linux-media@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: PCIe capture driver References: In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-media-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: On 10/19/2015 10:26 PM, Ran Shalit wrote: > Hello, > > When writing a device driver for capturing video coming from PCIe, > does it need to be used as v4l device (video for linux) , ? Yes. If you don't then 1) you will never be able to upstream the driver, 2) any application that wants to use your driver will need custom code to talk to your driver, 3) it will be a lot more work to write the driver since you can't use the V4L2 kernel frameworks it provides or ask for help. Basically, by deciding to reinvent the wheel you're screwing over your customers and yourself. Here is a nice PCI(e) template driver that you can use as your starting point: Documentation/video4linux/v4l2-pci-skeleton.c Regards, Hans