A few weeks ago, Alan Cox suggested that Serguei Miridonov submit the `Unified' Zoran
driver he's been working on for inclusion in the Linux kernel proper. So far, I
haven't seen anything to this end being done, so I want to ask some questions to see
if this is practical :). There appear to me to be three basic problems with merging
the Unified Zoran driver right now:
1) There is already a ZR36057 driver, as well as a Buz driver.
2) Building the Unified driver takes a bit of messing with the Makefile
3) It seems most practical to use the `update' script in the Unified package to insert
the proper modules for your type of card (buz, dc10, lml33).
Firstly, I'm NOT a programmer, and certainly not a kernel hacker, but this strikes me
as workable: What if the code were merged, and buz, dc10, and lml33 were simply
`virtual' or `placeholder' modules, that depended on the actual modules to do the
work? This way, someone could have `alias char-major-81 dc10' in the
/etc/modules.conf file, or when `modprobe dc10' were typed, all of the other
saa*/adv*/zoran* modules were loaded as per the `virtual' modules' specification?
To address the first problem:
Dr. Johanni already said that his current (ZR36057/buz) code is a bit out of date, and
doesn't have time to really update it. Wolfgang Scherr has said (in so many words)
that he wouldn't be ashamed of having the Unified code put into the kernel source
tree. As far as I have seen in public forums, Serguei hasn't said anything one way or
another about this. In short, if Serguei /were/ to submit the new driver to Alan,
Alan would consider it seriously, and the merging process *could* start soon after
that, displacing Dr. Johanni's existing code in the tree.
To address the second problem:
This would cease to be a problem after the code is merged properly. As it stands, the
`messing with' I referred to can be fixed by opening the file and typing
`:%s/M-OBJS/obj-m/' and saving the bloody file. That can't be too hard...
To address the third and most difficult problem:
As it stands on my system (Linux-2.4.2), there are five modules necessary to run my
Pinnacle DC10+; zoran, adv7175, saa7110, i2c-old, and videodev. I've asked repeated
times on this and other lists about a more `permanent' solution than using Serguei's
update script, but nobody has been able to give me a straight answer. With my trusty
Bt878 board, all I had to do was put `alias char-major-81 bttv' in /etc/modules.conf,
and it was done for me. By using a placeholder module model, I (or anyone else) could
do the same thing, but use `dc10' instead of `bttv'. As I stated at the start of this
largely incoherent rant, I'm NOT a programmer and know nothing of the way the Linux
kernel and it's modules work. If my idea were sound, though, it could change the way
all v4l modules were loaded.
Am I really the first to think of this, or is this just impossible?
--
-=|JP|=- "This space intentionally left blank."
Jon Pennington | Debian 2.4 -o)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] | Auto Enthusiast /\\
Kansas City, MO, USA | Proud Husband and Father _\_V
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