On 03/11/2017 10:59 AM, Russell King - ARM Linux wrote:

On Sat, Mar 11, 2017 at 10:54:55AM -0800, Steve Longerbeam wrote:

quoted

On 03/11/2017 10:45 AM, Russell King - ARM Linux wrote:

quoted

I really don't think expecting the user to understand and configure
the pipeline is a sane way forward.  Think about it - should the
user need to know that, because they have a bayer-only CSI data
source, that there is only one path possible, and if they try to
configure a different path, then things will just error out?

For the case of imx219 connected to iMX6, it really is as simple as
"there is only one possible path" and all the complexity of the media
interfaces/subdevs is completely unnecessary.  Every other block in
the graph is just noise.

The fact is that these dot graphs show a complex picture, but reality
is somewhat different - there's only relatively few paths available
depending on the connected source and the rest of the paths are
completely useless.

I totally disagree there. Raw bayer requires passthrough yes, but for
all other media bus formats on a mipi csi-2 bus, and all other media
bus formats on 8-bit parallel buses, the conersion pipelines can be
used for scaling, CSC, rotation, and motion-compensated de-interlacing.

... which only makes sense _if_ your source can produce those formats.
We don't actually disagree on that.

...and there are lots of those sources! You should try getting out of
your imx219 shell some time, and have a look around! :)

Let me re-state.  If the source can _only_ produce bayer, then there is
_only_ _one_ possible path, and all the overhead of the media controller
stuff is totally unnecessary.

Or, are you going to tell me that the user should have the right to
configure paths through the iMX6 hardware that are not permitted by the
iMX6 manuals for the data format being produced by the sensor?

Anyway, no the user is not allowed to configure a path that is not
allowed by the hardware, such as attempting to pass raw bayer through
an Image Converter path.

I guess you are simply commenting that for users of bayer sensors, the
other pipelines can be "confusing". But I trust you're not saying those
other pipelines should therefore not be present, which would be a
completely nutty argument.

Steve