Re: staging: me4000 and relation to other data acquisition devices

[Shawn Bohrer <shawn.bohrer@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 09:34:56AM -0700, Greg KH wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 10:49:18AM -0500, Shawn Bohrer wrote:
> > I have some questions about the user-kernel interface of the me4000
> > driver.  From my looking through the code it seems specific to the
> > me4000 hardware which does concern me since there are hundreds of
> > different data acquisition devices from many different vendors.  In my
> > opinion it would beneficial if at the very least all of these devices
> > shared a common device interface.
> 
> I totally agree.
> 
> The me4000's user interface is not "set in stone" and needs to be fixed
> up in order to move into the main kernel tree.
> 
> > Additionally there is the out of tree Comedi project:
> > 
> > http://comedi.org
> > 
> > Which supports this hardware, and many more, with a generic device
> > interface.  There may be other reason not to merge Comedi (I know they
> > have a desire to maintain support of their RT support), but I can't help
> > but feel that merging the me4000 driver without thinking about the
> > hundreds of other devices out there is a mistake.
> 
> I would love to get comedi into the kernel tree.  People have talked
> about it for years now, is it time for me to just take a snapshot and
> place it in drivers/staging/ for everyone to then work on cleaning up
> properly?

I think that is up to the Comedi maintainers.  If the Comedi maintainers
do not want to head in that direction, I'm sure the me4000 driver
currently in drivers/staging/ would benefit from their review.

--
Shawn