Laurent Pinchart wrote:

Do we really need a cross-architecture solution ? The pressure to implement a 
working userspace DMA solution seem to come mostly from embedded system 
developers, and embedded systems usually don't mind arch-specific APIs.
  

So what if the first attempt is ARM-only?  Let the PPC guys have theirs, 
and so on--- all that experience should give us ideas on how to do the 
One Size Fits All version.  In the meantime, at least we'll have 
something we can use.

It's obviously a tricky problem to solve.  Think of the arch-specific 
version as being "prototype".  We'll be prototyping for a while, I'm 
sure, and the fact that we don't have such an API yet tells me that we 
need a few prototypes to identify how--- if it's even possible--- to 
proceed with a generic implementation.

In that case developers will all create their own incompatible solutions and 
the situation will likely get worse.

... and that creates the additional problem of cleaning up the mess 
while at the same time finding and implementing a cross-architecture 
solution.



b.g.

-- 
Bill Gatliff
bgat at billgatliff.com