Re: [RFC/PATCH v6 03/12] media: Entities, pads and links

[Clemens Ladisch <clemens@ladisch.de>]

Laurent Pinchart wrote:
> On Tuesday 14 December 2010 13:40:21 Hans Verkuil wrote:
>> > On Monday 13 December 2010 17:10:51 Clemens Ladisch wrote:
>> >> * Entity types
>> >> 
>> >> TYPE_NODE was renamed to TYPE_DEVICE because "node" sounds like a node
>> >> in a graph, which does not distinguish it from other entity types
>> >> because all entities are part of the topology graph.  I chose "device"
>> >> as this type describes entities that are visible as some device node to
>> >> other software.
>> > 
>> > What this type describes is a device node. Both NODE and DEVICE can be
>> > confusing in my opinion, but DEVICE_NODE is a bit long.
>> 
>> What about DEVNODE? I think that would be a good alternative.
> 
> Fine with me. Clemens, any opinion on that ?

Fine with me too.

> > >> TYPE_EXT describes entities that represent some interface to the
> > >> external world, TYPE_INT those that are internal to the entire device.
> > >> (I'm not sure if that distinction is very useful, but TYPE_SUBDEV seems
> > >> to be an even more meaningless name.)
> > > 
> > > SUBDEV comes from the V4L2 world, and I agree that it might not be a very
> > > good name.
> > 
> > SUBDEV refers to a specific type of driver. Within the v4l world it is
> > well defined. So I prefer to keep this. Perhaps some additional comments
> > or documentation can be added to clarify this.
> 
> Should this be clarified by using V4L2_SUBDEV instead then ?

If the "SUBDEV" concept doesn't exist outside V4L, that would indeed be
better.

I don't want to rename things that come out of existing frameworks; this
naming discussion makes sense only for those entity (sub)types that can
be shared between them.  Are there any, besides jacks?

> What about ALSA entities, should they use MEDIA_ENTITY_TYPE_ALSA_* ?

The entity types representing ALSA devices are already named "ALSA".


Regards,
Clemens