From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: lirc@bartelmus.de (Christoph Bartelmus) Subject: Re: [RFC] What are the goals for the architecture of an in-kernel IR system? Date: 29 Nov 2009 13:01:00 +0100 Message-ID: References: <9e4733910911270949s3e8b5ba9qfe5025d490ad0cfa@mail.gmail.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Return-path: Received: from moutng.kundenserver.de ([212.227.17.8]:64694 "EHLO moutng.kundenserver.de" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1752102AbZK2MHB (ORCPT ); Sun, 29 Nov 2009 07:07:01 -0500 In-Reply-To: <9e4733910911270949s3e8b5ba9qfe5025d490ad0cfa@mail.gmail.com> Sender: linux-input-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: linux-input@vger.kernel.org To: jonsmirl@gmail.com Cc: awalls@radix.net, dmitry.torokhov@gmail.com, j@jannau.net, jarod@redhat.com, jarod@wilsonet.com, khc@pm.waw.pl, linux-input@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-media@vger.kernel.org, lirc@bartelmus.de, mchehab@redhat.com, superm1@ubuntu.com Hi Jon, on 27 Nov 09 at 12:49, Jon Smirl wrote: [...] > Christoph, take what you know from all of the years of working on LIRC > and design the perfect in-kernel system. This is the big chance to > redesign IR support and get rid of any past mistakes. Incorporate any > useful chunks of code and knowledge from the existing LIRC into the > new design. Drop legacy APIs, get rid of daemons, etc. You can do this > redesign in parallel with existing LIRC. Everyone can continue using > the existing code while the new scheme is being built. Think of it as > LIRC 2.0. You can lead this design effort, you're the most experience > developer in the IR area. This is a very difficult thing for me to do. I must admit that I'm very biased. Because lircd is the only userspace application that uses the LIRC kernel interface, we never had any problems changing the interface when needed. I can't say there's much legacy stuff inside. I'm quite happy with the interface. The other thing is that I can't really move the decoder from userspace to kernel because there are way too many userspace drivers that do require a userspace decoder. LIRC also is running on FreeBSD, MacOS and even Cygwin. So letting the userspace drivers take advantage of a potential Linux in- kernel decoder is not an option for me either. I'm having my 'LIRC maintainer' hat on mostly during this discussion and I do understand that from Linux kernel perspective things look different. > Take advantage of this window to make a > design that is fully integrated with Linux - put IR on equal footing > with the keyboard and mouse as it should be. That's a question that I have not answered for myself concludingly. Is a remote control really on exactly the same level as a keyboard or mouse? Christoph