Hi Michael,

On 1/10/23 18:04, Michael Cronenworth wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> Unless someone speaks up in the next week I am going to retire the 
> libwebcam[1] package.
> 
> Background: Some of the first USB web cameras using the "UVC" protocol needed 
> a user-space driver for controlling the hardware features. Logitech developed 
> the libwebcam library as an interface for users. Around 2014 Logitech stopped 
> development on it and it is now abandoned.
> 
> I have seen replacements pop up with the 'v4l-utils' package and the v4l2-ctl 
> CLI tool and guvcview graphical tool. Both receive modern care so I don't see 
> a need to continue shipping the libwebcam package. There are no known 
> (reqoquery) dependencies on libwebcam.

ATM there is no replacement for uvcdynctrl which is still necessary for
some Logitech webcams. uvcdynctrl uses a userspace database to map
some Logitech custom control GUIDs to standard v4l2-controls.

This allows various extra functionality on Logitech webcams, like
adjusting the image (auto-exposure algorithm) for backlight conditions.

But also controlling the focus on some Logitech models with a manual
controlled electronic focus lens (instead of auto-focus) and I have
1 Logitech model with a motorized stand with electronic tilt / swivel
controls which needs this.

I actually recently discussed what to do with this with the kernel
UVC driver maintainer. When the discussion was made many years ago
to put the mapping of vendor specific GUIDs in userspace the thought
was that there would be many many vendor specific controls and that
we did not want to have to add all those to the kernel.

But other then the Logitech custom controls set no support for
other custom controls was ever added to uvcdynctrl-data. So
the UVC driver maintainer said that he would be ok with just
adding these mappings directly to the kernel.

Once someone finds the time to actually add these mappings
to the kenrel libwebcam can be retired but until then it would
be nice if we can keep it around for uvcdynctrl.

Regards,

Hans



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