Greetings all, I was thinking about this the other night and wanted to
run it by everyone to provide some "food for thought". Please know
beforehand, however, that I'm not a developer, nor could I help turn
this into a reality other than offering my $0.02 as I don't know the
required programming languages nor the in-depth knowledge required to
construct anything. Also, since I don't have the required in-depth
knowledge, this is just an overview with terms I can relate to. With
that being said...
I'm not sure what DFB has in store for the 2.0 release as far as drivers
go (or even how they'll be handled), but I was wondering if there'd be a
way to create a single "core" graphics card driver that covers basic
output for _all_ graphics cards (like a vesa driver I suppose). From
that point, it could access particular functionality by way of "modules
or libraries". For example, in the absence of hardware support, those
"modules or libraries" could be substituted for software replacements.
Let's that we have two users and the first, Tom, is using an older
Matrox video card without modern hardware functionality such as h.264
decoding. User 2, Bob, is using a newer Intel card that does have h.264
decoding built into the hardware. Both systems will contain the "base"
video card driver which will reference the same file for h.264 decoding
(e.g. /lib/libvid264decode.x). However, on Tom's system that referenced
file will contain the decoding functionality through software functions
(adding more overhead to the CPU, but providing Tom with the ability to
watch h.264 videos). Bob's system will have that same "module or
library" file, but it will rather provide access to the hardware
functionality built into his card. So... the filename is the same (for
conformity and usability), but its "guts" will contain different sets of
code. I guess the best way I could describe this is a video driver that
is modular and can allow for global functionality via software or
hardware "modules or libraries". That way, the DFB team could create
software modules for global functionality and the cards that do have
this functionality built into the hardware can create their specific
version of the "module or library". Aside from the modular benefits,
another benefit is that cards that don't have a particular "module or
library" built to take advantage of their hardware capabilities will
still have full functionality and can replace them with "modules or
libraries" that do when they become available. Plus developers will be
working on subsets of functionality instead of a complete driver.
Does this sound possible or even worth while?
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