Re: [PATCH] backlight dimmer

[jack@antonello.org]

Arjan van de Ven wrote:
> On Sun, 28 Oct 2007 22:30:55 +0100
> "lists@antonello.org" <lists@antonello.org> wrote:
> 
>> Ok,
>>   now checkpatch.pl only complains about a missing signed-off-by.
>> Is this ok for review?
> 
> 
> hi,
> 
> when going over your patch.. is there a reason you introduce yet
> another timeout infrastructure? Is there something wrong with the
> existing ones that maybe should be fixed instead?
> Either way.. please put justification for such new mechanism in the
> patch changelog....
> 
> Greetings,
>    Arjan van de Ven
> 

hi,

i don't think there are similar infrastructures. This timeout is
not quite a timer.

The timeout starts counting when timeout_touch() is first called. At
this point the start() function is executed in non-atomic context.
Then either it is reset if timeout_touch() is called in time (and
thus starts to count again). Else it triggers, and executes the
trigger() function in non-atomic context and it stays idle unless
timeout_touch() is called again.

The non-atomic context is needed to use backlight.c mutexes and
that is enabled with the use of workqueues.

I don't mean to add some new infrastructure to the base kernel, but
it seemed a general functionality to me. In fact it may also be fully
included in backlight.c. Since backlight.h is in include/linux, i was
forced to put timeout.h in include/linux also. But this is just
a temporary fix.

jacopo