Messages in this thread | | | Date | Mon, 6 Mar 2006 14:49:08 -0800 | From | Greg KH <> | Subject | State of the Linux Driver core and sysfs Subsystems for 2.6.16-rc5 |
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Here's a summary of the current state of the Linux Driver core and sysfs subsystems as of 2.6.16-rc5.
If the information in here is incorrect, or anyone knows of any outstanding issues not listed here, please let me know.
List of outstanding regressions from 2.6.15: - none known.
List of outstanding regressions from older kernel versions: - none known.
There are no outstanding bugs for these subsystems in the bugzilla.kernel.org system that I know of. If this is not true, please point me at the bugs you feel I should know about.
Future stuff: All of the patches that will be sent in for 2.6.17 can be found in my quilt tree at http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/gregkh/gregkh-2.6/ and are included automagically in the -mm releases.
Here's a summary of the changes that can be found there: - There's a big pending AOE driver update that missed the 2.6.16 cut-off timeframe. If you use this driver, I would recommend getting these patches. - pollable sysfs attributes will be coming soon. I think Neil is going to rework the existing patches, due to some issues found in -mm reviews, but the functionality should remain the same (adds a new sysfs function you can call to let userspace know that a sysfs file has changed contents. Use this instead of the old uevent interface to notify userspace in an easier manner.) - change semaphores to mutexes. - module sysfs file refcount fixes - EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL_FUTURE() addition. - relayfs as a stand-alone filesystem is gone, to be replaced with the ability to use relayfs files from within sysfs. - other minor bugfixes.
I am currently working on allowing struct device to be bound to a struct class as part of the migration away from struct class_device and toward allowing everything to be a struct device in the sysfs device tree. That work is being tested out on the "usbfs2" work which adds a dev file to every USB endpoint in the system, allowing async-io to be used from userspace instead of the ioctl mess we have in usbfs today. If anyone is interested in this work, look in my patch queue for the initial cut of it. It will be rapidly changing this week as I get the time to work more on it.
The above mentioned changes, do not change any existing sysfs or driver core apis, but only add a few more functions. So there are no API changes coming in the near future that I am aware of.
It is also noted that a lot of people still don't know how to use a kobject properly, and that more sysfs files are containing more than one value (hey, look a table of numbers in the cpufreq file...) Please be aware that people will be walking around with big sticks and whacking the fingers of any programmers who do this. When in doubt, _please_ ask how to do this kind of low-level programming as it is very easy to get wrong...
Also the kernel/userspace API documentation patch is pending me getting the chance to work on it today or tomorrow, don't worry, I haven't forgotten about it :)
Was this summary useful for people? Anything that I should add to it?
thanks,
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