Re: New dell-wireless driver

[Darren Hart <dvhart@infradead.org>]

On Sat, Nov 22, 2014 at 11:45:08PM +0100, Pali Rohár wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I saw dell-wireless driver on platform-driver-x86 mailinglist [1] 
> which using DELLABCE acpi device and I do not like some parts in 
> this driver.

Hi Pali,

Thanks for reviewing and speaking up :)

> 
> First is that this driver export rfkill event as keypress which 
> is also reported to userspace by keyboard controller. So then 
> userspace receive two rfkill keypresses.

Alex, can you comment? Does the keyboard controller also see this event?

> 
> Second is that DELLABCE acpi device can also control "soft" 
> rfkill status and this driver does not enable it because it use 
> input class instead rfkill.
> 
> Anyway I have unfinished my version of DELLABCE acpi driver which 
> will use rfkill interface and plus allow to use hw switch events 
> in dell-laptop.ko driver.

Is this something that could be applied incrementally fo Alex's driver, or is it
something we'd be best starting over with?

We have some precedent for input drivers (there is one nearly identical to the
dell driver for hp, also by Alex). Using rfkill does seem like the better
approach without digging into it.

> 
> Currently dell-laptop.ko driver is using i8042 hook function for 
> detecting hw switch key press event. It is needed to detect if 
> rfkill state was changed or not.
> 
> My prepared patches for dell-laptop.ko allows to use acpi event 
> from DELLABCE driver, so i8042 hook function can be dropped. 
> Really it is not good idea to pass every PS/2 data from both 
> keyboard, touchpad and trackpoint to dell-laptop driver and if 
> there is alternative (DELLABCE) it is better to use it.
> 
> But now I would like to hear what do you think about it.
> 
> Because only one kernel driver can attach to DELLABCE acpi 
> device, I cannot use new dell-wireless driver. And I think only 
> one driver can hit mainline kernel.

I would like to see your patch, it sounds like it might be a better option.

-- 
Darren Hart
Intel Open Source Technology Center