Normally I wouldn't post this here in linux-kernel, but lately I've
been writing about hardware resource management on this list. For those
who'd like to see what I'm working with (comments are wanted!), I am
posting this here. Perhaps this is something for v2.1.*?
Remember that this stuff is still _very_ EXPERIMENTAL.
=====================
I've just updated my PnP patch (#10) to kernel v2.0.0.
I'd _really_ like to know if this breaks any non-i386 arch code!!
It offers:
- 100% backwards compatible with existing kernel code.
(Hopefully this extra code will vanish eventually. It is
possible to convert the entire kernel to the new API now,
but 3rd party modules will need to be supported for a while.)
- _NEW_ hardware resource management API with useful features:
- unified resource management (IRQ, DMA, I/O, address, ... )
- non-architecture specific
- request/release multiple resources in a single call
- bit-mask region support
- single call region renaming
- auto-merging of compatible region subsets for fewer regions
- support for release'ing any subset of a region
- can verify the success of all calls
- _NEW_ system info files /proc/addresses and /proc/irq, and
a single common format for all the hardware resource /proc files.
(yes, there is a good reason for /proc/irq and /proc/interrupts)
- The skeleton for the PnP system (incomplete, but safely bootable)
See the PnP Project web page for details at URL http://www.redhat.com/pnp/
(Mirrors may be out of date until their next refresh)
Really interested people can subscribe to the pnp-list, where this sort
of stuff is discussed. See the same URL for details on subscribing.
-- Andrew E. Mileski mailto:aem@ott.hookup.net http://www.redhat.com/~aem/ Linux Plug-and-Play Project http://www.redhat.com/pnp/Red Hat Software sponsors these pages - I have no other affilitation with Red Hat Software, and I have never used any of their products.