Re: [PATCH v2 1/5] video: move mediabus format definition to a more standard place

[Laurent Pinchart <laurent.pinchart@ideasonboard.com>]

Hi Boris,

On Tuesday 30 September 2014 11:44:23 Boris Brezillon wrote:
> On Tue, 30 Sep 2014 10:39:53 +0200 Thierry Reding wrote:
> > On Tue, Sep 30, 2014 at 09:37:57AM +0200, Boris Brezillon wrote:
> >> On Mon, 29 Sep 2014 23:41:09 +0300 Laurent Pinchart wrote:
> >
> > [...]
> > 
> >>> Incidentally, patch 2/5 in this series is missing a documentation
> >>> update ;-)
> >>
> >> Yep, regarding this patch, I wonder if it's really necessary to add
> >> new formats to the v4l2_mbus_pixelcode enum.
> >> If we want to move to this new common definition (across the video
> >> related subsytems), we should deprecate the old enum
> >> v4l2_mbus_pixelcode, and this start by not adding new formats, don't
> >> you think ?
> > 
> > I agree in general, but I think it could prove problematic in practice.
> > If somebody wants to use one of the new codes but is using the V4L2 enum
> > they have a problem.
> > 
> > That said, given that there is now a unified enum people will hopefully
> > start converting drivers to it instead.
> 
> I'm more worried about user-space lib/programs as this header is part
> of the uapi...
> 
> But let's be optimistic here and keep porting new formats to
> v4l2_mbus_pixelcode enum ;-).

I think we should try to keep the two in sync, until we can remove the 
v4l2_mbus_pixelcode enum (I know, I'm being utopian here).

However, I really want all pixel codes to be properly documented, regardless 
of whether we add them to v4l2_mbus_pixelcode or not.

> Anyway, I still don't know where to put the documentation. Dropping a
> new video format doc without any context (I mean subdev-formats.xml is
> included in media documentation, but there's no generic video doc yet)
> is a bit weird...

Now that's a good question. We could start a generic video docbook 
documentation. As I expect more infrastructure to be shared between V4L2 and 
DRM (and, who knows, FBDEV...) over time, I think that would be a good move. 
However docbook doesn't seem to be in the DRM developers' good books, so this 
might be frown upon. We could also use a plain text, kerneldoc-like format for 
the common documentation, but the formats would then disappear from the V4L2 
documentation, which isn't a very good idea. For that reason I would favour 
docbook.

I've CC'ed Hans Verkuil who might want to share his opinion on the matter.

-- 
Regards,

Laurent Pinchart