[PATCH/RFC 0/5] Generic RTC class driver

Geert Uytterhoeven
2009-02-20T15:47:19Z

I've been looking into problems with auto-loading the RTC driver on PPC (more
specifically on PS3):
- The recent "rtc-ppc" RTC class driver is not autoloaded by udev because
it's an old style platform driver that contains its own platform device.
- The alternative old "genrtc" driver is autoloaded on non-udev systems only
because it contains the module alias char-major-10-135. However, it's not
a new-style RTC class driver.

Fortunately there already exists a generic RTC class driver: "rtc-parisc".
Despite it's name, it's platform-independent, as it's build on top of the RTC
abstraction used by "genrtc".

This patch series
- adds a missing module alias to rtc-parisc,
- renames rtc-parisc to rtc-generic,
- converts the architectures that currently have CONFIG_GEN_RTC enabled in
their defconfig (m68k, parisc, powerpc) to rtc-generic,
- removes the obsolete rtc-ppc driver,
- removes the old genrtc driver.

Note that genrtc may be used on other archictectures as well: at least alpha
has the required infrastructure ([gs]et_rtc_time()). The Kconfig rules allow
genrtc to be enabled on several others (cris, h8300, mn10300, um, x86, xtensa).

Furthermore genrtc and rtc-generic are not 100% userspace compatible:
- /dev/rtc provided by genrtc uses a misc character device (10:135),
- /dev/rtc provided by rtc-generic uses a dynamic character device.

So perhaps we don't want to kill gen-rtc yet?

Any comments are welcomed!

With kind regards,

Geert Uytterhoeven
Software Architect

Sony Techsoft Centre Europe
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