Question about psmouse alps driver patches

Question about psmouse alps driver patches

[dturvene]

I submitted normalized patches to Canonical Ubuntu in October for the 
alps psmouse touchpad.  The thread is long and confusing at

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/606238

Since then, I have maintained a psmouse dlkm that provides alps support 
for a number of new systems, primarily from Dell.

Recently, I have been asked by several people to submit the patches to 
linux-input to merge into the upstream kernel.  I am looking for advice 
on how to proceed.  The big problems are:

1) The alps touchpads seem to be mutating relatively quickly with 
several unrecognized signatures appearing over the last few months after 
I built my patches.

2) A number of people have submitted a patch for a particular alps 
touchpad signature, which will need to be reconciled and rolled-up into 
a single driver.  See the Jan 20 3-part submission by 
cernekee@gmail.com.  His patches look good, and clean up the code a good 
bit, but target a touchpad signature also reverse-engineered by 
bgarami.foss@gmail.com.  I integrated the bgarami fixes into my patches 
but the patches from cernekee@gmail.com are radically different.

3) I built the patches against the 3.2 kernel.  My understanding is they 
do not even compile against the kernel head - something like 3.5.x.

I feel bad submitting the patches I have.  They are big and rough 
because several of us reverse-engineered the ALPS interfaces but did not 
try to figure them out.  It will take a lot of merge+test work to 
reconcile the patch submissions for the various alps target platforms.

What do you suggest I do (e.g. submit a patch for only the new protocol 
I can test?)

Re: Question about psmouse alps driver patches

[Peter Korsgaard]

>>>>> "dturvene" == dturvene  <dturvene@dahetral.com> writes:


Hi,

 dturvene> I feel bad submitting the patches I have.  They are big and
 dturvene> rough because several of us reverse-engineered the ALPS
 dturvene> interfaces but did not try to figure them out.  It will take
 dturvene> a lot of merge+test work to reconcile the patch submissions
 dturvene> for the various alps target platforms.

 dturvene> What do you suggest I do (e.g. submit a patch for only the new
 dturvene> protocol I can test?)

Yes, other devices can be tested and added by other people. I would be
interested in getting the alps in my Dell e6230 working for one.

-- 
Bye, Peter Korsgaard