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Re: No more new fbdev drivers, please

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Hi David,

On Sat, Sep 26, 2015 at 8:13 PM, David Herrmann <dh.herrmann@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Sep 26, 2015 at 8:01 PM, Geert Uytterhoeven
> <geert@linux-m68k.org> wrote:
>> On Sat, Sep 26, 2015 at 7:07 PM, Alex Deucher <alexdeucher@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On Sat, Sep 26, 2015 at 4:28 AM, Geert Uytterhoeven
>>> <geert@linux-m68k.org> wrote:
>>>> For the (mailing list) record, can you please provide some explicit pointers
>>>> to these existing really simple drivers?
>>>
>>> See the tilcdc, ast, mgag200, and udl drivers for example.
>>
>> Thanks for the list!
>>
>> The smallest of these (udl) still counts in at ca. 2800 LoC, while there are
>> several fbdev drivers that have less than 200 LoC.
>> Granted, these really small ones support a single fixed video mode only, but
>> you can write a simple fbdev driver with mode setting in less than 1000 LoC.
>>
>> I'm sure DRM can do better?
>
> Is counting lines really the level of the discussion to go here?

LoC is not the most important. But if the smallest DRM driver needs an order
of magnitude more LoC than the smallest fbdev driver, I start to wonder.

E.g. if I want to write a new simple driver for my new shiny hardware, it
can make a big difference if I have to write (and test/debug) 800 LoC, or
3000 LoC.

> DRM is a big set of helpers, nothing else. If many trivial, small
> drivers share common code, developers are more than welcome to
> contribute them to drm-core and help making drivers less complex.

Good. But from the figures above, I don't think we're at that point yet that
writing a new DRM driver is less/equal amount of work than writing a new
fbdev driver, at least for some classes of hardware. So it may be a bit
premature to put a moratorium on new fbdev drivers.
I may be mistaken, I'm still not sufficiently familiar with the DRM subsystem
as I'd like to be.

> As Daniel mentioned, the connector+encoder+crtc combination is one of
> those simplifications that would make sense if more such drivers are
> added. Furthermore, the not-yet-merged SimpleDRM driver is one example
> how to implement multiple of those dumb-fb drivers with a shared
> code-base.

Thanks, looking forward to SimpleDRM!

Gr{oetje,eeting}s,

                        Geert

--
Geert Uytterhoeven -- There's lots of Linux beyond ia32 -- geert@linux-m68k.org

In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But
when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that.
                                -- Linus Torvalds
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Thread

No more new fbdev drivers, please Tomi Valkeinen <tomi.valkeinen@ti.com> - 2015-09-24 14:30 +0200
  Re: No more new fbdev drivers, please Thomas Petazzoni <thomas.petazzoni@free-electrons.com> - 2015-09-24 14:50 +0200
    Re: No more new fbdev drivers, please Austin S Hemmelgarn <ahferroin7@gmail.com> - 2015-09-24 17:30 +0200
      Re: No more new fbdev drivers, please Alex Deucher <alexdeucher@gmail.com> - 2015-09-24 17:40 +0200
      Re: No more new fbdev drivers, please Daniel Vetter <daniel@ffwll.ch> - 2015-09-24 18:00 +0200
        Re: No more new fbdev drivers, please Austin S Hemmelgarn <ahferroin7@gmail.com> - 2015-09-24 18:20 +0200
        Re: No more new fbdev drivers, please Ondrej Zary <linux@rainbow-software.org> - 2015-09-24 19:20 +0200
          Re: No more new fbdev drivers, please Daniel Vetter <daniel@ffwll.ch> - 2015-09-24 20:10 +0200
    Re: No more new fbdev drivers, please Daniel Vetter <daniel@ffwll.ch> - 2015-09-24 17:30 +0200
      Re: No more new fbdev drivers, please Geert Uytterhoeven <geert@linux-m68k.org> - 2015-09-26 10:30 +0200
        Re: No more new fbdev drivers, please Alex Deucher <alexdeucher@gmail.com> - 2015-09-26 19:10 +0200
          Re: No more new fbdev drivers, please Geert Uytterhoeven <geert@linux-m68k.org> - 2015-09-26 20:10 +0200
            Re: No more new fbdev drivers, please David Herrmann <dh.herrmann@gmail.com> - 2015-09-26 20:20 +0200
              Re: No more new fbdev drivers, please Geert Uytterhoeven <geert@linux-m68k.org> - 2015-09-26 20:50 +0200
                Re: No more new fbdev drivers, please Rob Clark <robdclark@gmail.com> - 2015-09-26 22:50 +0200
                Re: No more new fbdev drivers, please Dave Airlie <airlied@gmail.com> - 2015-09-27 00:00 +0200
                Re: No more new fbdev drivers, please Emil Velikov <emil.l.velikov@gmail.com> - 2015-09-30 14:00 +0200
              Re: No more new fbdev drivers, please Gerd Hoffmann <kraxel@redhat.com> - 2015-09-28 09:50 +0200
                Re: No more new fbdev drivers, please Daniel Vetter <daniel@ffwll.ch> - 2015-09-28 14:40 +0200
                Re: No more new fbdev drivers, please Gerd Hoffmann <kraxel@redhat.com> - 2015-09-29 10:30 +0200
                Re: No more new fbdev drivers, please Laurent Pinchart <laurent.pinchart@ideasonboard.com> - 2015-09-29 10:40 +0200
            Re: No more new fbdev drivers, please Bernie Thompson <bernie@plugable.com> - 2015-09-28 23:00 +0200
            Re: No more new fbdev drivers, please Daniel Vetter <daniel@ffwll.ch> - 2015-09-29 09:10 +0200
  Re: No more new fbdev drivers, please Aaro Koskinen <aaro.koskinen@iki.fi> - 2015-09-25 11:00 +0200
    Re: No more new fbdev drivers, please Ondrej Zary <linux@rainbow-software.org> - 2015-09-25 13:10 +0200
  Re: No more new fbdev drivers, please Sudip Mukherjee <sudipm.mukherjee@gmail.com> - 2015-09-26 09:20 +0200
    Re: No more new fbdev drivers, please Ilia Mirkin <imirkin@alum.mit.edu> - 2015-09-26 09:40 +0200
  Re: No more new fbdev drivers, please Noralf Trønnes <noralf@tronnes.org> - 2015-09-27 15:20 +0200
    Re: No more new fbdev drivers, please Emil Velikov <emil.l.velikov@gmail.com> - 2015-09-27 18:10 +0200
      Re: No more new fbdev drivers, please Noralf Trønnes <noralf@tronnes.org> - 2015-09-29 01:00 +0200
        Re: No more new fbdev drivers, please Daniel Vetter <daniel@ffwll.ch> - 2015-09-29 09:10 +0200

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