Re: [PATCH v2 0/4] Add ff-memless-next and make hid-lg4ff use it

[Dmitry Torokhov]

On Mon, Feb 24, 2014 at 10:17:25PM +0100, Elias Vanderstuyft wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 24, 2014 at 1:58 AM, Michal Malý <madcatxster@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > On Monday 24 of February 2014 02:32:27 Anssi Hannula wrote:
> >>
> >> I think we should extend the current ff-memless instead of duplicating
> >> its functionality (even on a "for now" basis).
> >>
> >> Having looked at ff-memless-next briefly, it seems very similar to
> >> ff-memless on its basic working principle, and therefore I don't really
> >> see why extending ff-memless would be too cumbersome. Unless I'm missing
> >> something - in that case, feel free to point it out to me :)
> >
> > Deciding whether to patch ff-memless or write a new driver from scratch was a
> > perfect example of being caught between the rock and a hard place. I am not
> > particularly fond of the fact that we would have two modules doing pretty much
> > the same thing. My reasons for writing a separate module were:
> > - Periodic effects. ff-memless doesn't do "real" periodic effects, it simply
> > emulates them through rumble effect. Devices without rumble effect support
> > require emulation through constant force effect. Just this was not something
> > one could write in one afternoon:)
> > - Conditional effects. These effects cannot be by nature combined into one
> > overall force (at least not easily) so they have to be handled one by one -
> > this is a concept ff-memless does not seem to consider. FFB devices have
> > limits as to how many conditional (referred to as "uncombinable" in MLNX)
> > effects can be active simultaneously, etc.
> > All in all it seemed less error prone to write a new driver based on the ff-
> > memless logic, test and deploy it on devices I have access to and once we are
> > sure there are no nasty regressions port the rest of the drivers to the new
> > API. Given the scope of the changes I am afraid that a "patch" to ff-memless
> > would be pretty close to a rewrite anyway.
> 
> And add the fact that we already heavily tested the ff-memless-next driver.
> Unless you do a diff between the original ff-memless.c and the current
> ff-memless-next.c (which will result in a rather unintuitive patch),
> it would be a huge waste of time to retest the modified (when doing
> efforts to create an intuitive patch) ff-memless-next.c, considered my
> total time spend on testing (and not to speak of the time that Michal
> spent to fix the corresponding bugs.)
> I know that might not be much of an argument, but on the other side,
> my motivation to test again from scratch will be much lower (I can't
> change much on that, I'm afraid), which would eventually lead to lower
> reliability of the final product.

On the other hand having 2 drivers implementing very similar
functionality would lead to general confusion as to which one should be
used; they will also have to be maintained.

I would rather see them merged into one driver providing necessary
services to all memoryless FF devices.

Thanks.

-- 
Dmitry
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