Re: 2.6.3-rc3 radeonfb: Problems with new (and old) driver

Linus Torvalds
2004-02-16T23:16:23Z

On Tue, 17 Feb 2004, Benjamin Herrenschmidt wrote:
>
> That's what I was talking about: what drivers should I convert :) On
> PPC, I don't build things like vgacon etc... Anyway, patch coming soon.

I'd suggest converting all the ones you can find - on the assumption that
adding the extra argument (and ignoring it) is the always the right thing
to do.

So the "conversion" would be to just change the function declaration, and
none of the code. Except for fbdev (and even there that conversion would
be "correct" - it just wouldn't take advantage of the new information).

> Note that a mode_switch separate from blank would have made sense
> too some way...

Yes. I agree. The naming is crap. We're not blanking, we're changing
state.

But it's not a mode switch either - _sometimes_ it's a mode switch, but
sometimes the state change is that we're switching to another backing
store (ie a VC switch) but with the same mode.

So _logically_ the interface should be more of a "con_notify_change()"
one, with a bitmap of which states have changed (where "graphics vs text"
is just one set of states - resultion is another, VC backing store is one,
etc etc).

(I call it "notify_change()", because we have exactly that in VFS terms,
where the inode change descriptor has an attribute table and a "valid"
bitmap).

Linus