[PATCH 00/15] device-global identifiers and routes introduced

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

 



This patchset introduces a new framework for providing and maintaining a
consistent namespace to define terminal/signal names for a set of comedi
devices.  This effort was primarily focused on supporting NI hardware, but the
interfaces introduced here can be implemented by all other hardware drivers, if
desired.  Otherwise, these new interfaces do not effect any interfaces
previously defined or prior use cases (i.e. backwards compatibility).

Some background:
  There have been significant confusions over the past many years for users
  when trying to understand how to connect to/from signals and terminals on
  NI hardware using comedi.  The major reason for this is that the actual
  register values were exposed and required to be used by end users.  Several
  major reasons exist why this caused major confusion for users:

  1) The register values are _NOT_ in user documentation, but rather in
    arcane locations, such as a few register programming manuals that are
    increasingly hard to find.  Some information is found in the register level
    programming libraries provided by National Instruments (NI-MHDDK), but
    many items are only vaguely found/mentioned in the comments of the NI-MHDDK
    example code.  There is no one place to find the various valid values of the
    registers.

  2) The register values are _NOT_ completely consistent.  There is no way to
    gain any sense of intuition of which values, or even enums one should use
    for various registers.  There was some attempt in prior use of comedi to
    name enums such that a user might know which enums should be used for
    varying purposes, but the end-user had to gain a knowledge of register
    values to correctly wield this approach.

  3) The names for signals and registers found in the various register level
    programming manuals and vendor-provided documentation are _not_ even
    close to the same names that are in the end-user documentation.

  4) The sets of routes that are valid are not consistent from device to device.
    One additional major challenge is that this information is not documented
    and does not seem to be obtainable in any programmatic fashion, neither
    through the proprietary NIDAQmx(-base) c-libraries, nor with register level
    programming.  In fact, the only consistent source of this information is
    through the proprietary NI-MAX software, which currently only runs on
    Windows platforms.  A further challenge is that this information cannot be
    exported from NI-MAX, except by screenshot.

Similar confusion, albeit less, plagued NI's previous version of their own
proprietary drivers.  Earlier than 2003, NI greatly simplified the situation for
users by releasing a new API that abstracted the names of signals/terminals to a
common and intuitive set of names.  In addition, this new API provided a much
more common interface to use for most of NI hardware.

Comedi already provides such a common interface for data-acquisition and control
hardware.  This effort complements comedi's abstraction layers by further
abstracting much more of the use cases for NI hardware, but allowing users _and_
developers to directly refer to NI documentation (user-level, register-level,
and the register-level examples of the NI-MHDDK).

The goal of these patches are:
  0) Allow current code to function as is, providing backwards compatibility to
    the current interface, following a suggestion by Eric Piel.
  1) Provide an interface to connect routes or identify signal sources and
    destinations using a consistent naming scheme, global to a driver family.
  2) For NI devices, use terminal/signal naming that is consistent with (a) the
    NI's user level documentation, (b) NI's user-level code, (c) the information
    as provided by the proprietary NI-MAX software, and (d) the user interface
    code provided by the user-land comedilib library.
  3) Make for easy maintenance of register level values that are to be used for
    any particular NI device of any particular NI device family.
  4) Provide a means whereby the user can query the set of signal routes that is
    valid for a particular device.
  5) Provide an interface whereby the user can query the status and capability
    of any signal route.  The driver can provide information on whether the
    route is valid for the device and whether the route is already connected.

This patch set implements various changes that keep the goals set forth here.
This patch set is in nowise complete with respect to the various NI hardware
options supported by comedi, though a large selection should be supported--all
e/m-series (ni_mio_common.c hardware) boards and 660x boards are the target of
this patch set, including the tio devices (counter/timers) used by these boards.

A copy of these patches can be found at:
http://www.umich.edu/~olsonse/patches/comedi-devglobal-v1/

Cc: Eric Piel <piel@xxxxxxxxxx>

Spencer E. Olson (15):
  staging: comedi: tests: add unittest framework for comedi
  staging: comedi: add abstracted NI signal/terminal named constants
  staging: comedi: ni_routing: Add NI signal routing info
  staging: comedi: ni_routing: add ni routing tables
  staging: comedi: add new device-global config interface
  staging: comedi: add interface to ni routing table information
  staging: comedi: ni_mio_common: implement new routing for TRIG_EXT
  staging: comedi: ni_mio_common: implement global pfi,rtsi routing
  staging: comedi: ni_mio_common: implement output selection of
    GPFO_{0,1}
  staging: comedi: tio: implement global tio/ctr routing
  staging: comedi: ni_mio_common: create device-global access to tio
  staging: comedi: ni_660x: Add NI PCI-6608 to list of supported devices
  staging: comedi: ni_660x: clean up pfi routing
  staging: comedi: ni_660x: add device-global routing
  staging: comedi: ni_routes: update notes for valid routes

 drivers/staging/comedi/Kconfig                     |     4 +
 drivers/staging/comedi/comedi.h                    |   177 +
 drivers/staging/comedi/comedi_fops.c               |    84 +
 drivers/staging/comedi/comedidev.h                 |    13 +
 drivers/staging/comedi/drivers.c                   |    18 +
 drivers/staging/comedi/drivers/Makefile            |     2 +
 drivers/staging/comedi/drivers/ni_660x.c           |   358 +-
 drivers/staging/comedi/drivers/ni_mio_common.c     |   886 +-
 drivers/staging/comedi/drivers/ni_routes.c         |   321 +
 drivers/staging/comedi/drivers/ni_routes.h         |   315 +
 .../staging/comedi/drivers/ni_routing/.gitignore   |     3 +
 drivers/staging/comedi/drivers/ni_routing/Makefile |    40 +
 drivers/staging/comedi/drivers/ni_routing/README   |   110 +
 .../comedi/drivers/ni_routing/extract_tables.py    |   259 +
 .../comedi/drivers/ni_routing/ni_device_routes.c   | 20251 +++++++++++++++++++
 .../ni_routing/ni_device_routes/PCI-6070E.csv      |    40 +
 .../ni_routing/ni_device_routes/PCI-6220.csv       |    46 +
 .../ni_routing/ni_device_routes/PCI-6221.csv       |    50 +
 .../ni_routing/ni_device_routes/PCI-6251.csv       |    51 +
 .../ni_routing/ni_device_routes/PCI-6254.csv       |    47 +
 .../ni_routing/ni_device_routes/PCI-6259.csv       |    51 +
 .../ni_routing/ni_device_routes/PCI-6534.csv       |    29 +
 .../ni_routing/ni_device_routes/PCI-6602.csv       |    78 +
 .../ni_routing/ni_device_routes/PCI-6713.csv       |    32 +
 .../ni_routing/ni_device_routes/PCI-6723.csv       |    32 +
 .../ni_routing/ni_device_routes/PCI-6733.csv       |    34 +
 .../ni_routing/ni_device_routes/PXI-6030E.csv      |    39 +
 .../ni_routing/ni_device_routes/PXI-6224.csv       |    46 +
 .../ni_routing/ni_device_routes/PXI-6225.csv       |    49 +
 .../ni_routing/ni_device_routes/PXI-6251.csv       |    50 +
 .../ni_routing/ni_device_routes/PXI-6733.csv       |    35 +
 .../ni_routing/ni_device_routes/PXIe-6251.csv      |    52 +
 .../comedi/drivers/ni_routing/ni_route_values.c    |  2786 +++
 .../drivers/ni_routing/ni_route_values/ni_660x.csv |   100 +
 .../ni_routing/ni_route_values/ni_eseries.csv      |    78 +
 .../ni_routing/ni_route_values/ni_mseries.csv      |    90 +
 drivers/staging/comedi/drivers/ni_stc.h            |    78 +-
 drivers/staging/comedi/drivers/ni_tio.c            |   428 +-
 drivers/staging/comedi/drivers/ni_tio.h            |    42 +-
 drivers/staging/comedi/drivers/ni_tio_internal.h   |     1 +
 drivers/staging/comedi/drivers/ni_tiocmd.c         |    66 +-
 drivers/staging/comedi/drivers/tests/Makefile      |     6 +
 .../staging/comedi/drivers/tests/example_test.c    |    71 +
 .../staging/comedi/drivers/tests/ni_routes_test.c  |   596 +
 drivers/staging/comedi/drivers/tests/unittest.h    |    62 +
 45 files changed, 27770 insertions(+), 236 deletions(-)
 create mode 100644 drivers/staging/comedi/drivers/ni_routes.c
 create mode 100644 drivers/staging/comedi/drivers/ni_routes.h
 create mode 100644 drivers/staging/comedi/drivers/ni_routing/.gitignore
 create mode 100644 drivers/staging/comedi/drivers/ni_routing/Makefile
 create mode 100644 drivers/staging/comedi/drivers/ni_routing/README
 create mode 100755 drivers/staging/comedi/drivers/ni_routing/extract_tables.py
 create mode 100644 drivers/staging/comedi/drivers/ni_routing/ni_device_routes.c
 create mode 100644 drivers/staging/comedi/drivers/ni_routing/ni_device_routes/PCI-6070E.csv
 create mode 100644 drivers/staging/comedi/drivers/ni_routing/ni_device_routes/PCI-6220.csv
 create mode 100644 drivers/staging/comedi/drivers/ni_routing/ni_device_routes/PCI-6221.csv
 create mode 100644 drivers/staging/comedi/drivers/ni_routing/ni_device_routes/PCI-6251.csv
 create mode 100644 drivers/staging/comedi/drivers/ni_routing/ni_device_routes/PCI-6254.csv
 create mode 100644 drivers/staging/comedi/drivers/ni_routing/ni_device_routes/PCI-6259.csv
 create mode 100644 drivers/staging/comedi/drivers/ni_routing/ni_device_routes/PCI-6534.csv
 create mode 100644 drivers/staging/comedi/drivers/ni_routing/ni_device_routes/PCI-6602.csv
 create mode 100644 drivers/staging/comedi/drivers/ni_routing/ni_device_routes/PCI-6713.csv
 create mode 100644 drivers/staging/comedi/drivers/ni_routing/ni_device_routes/PCI-6723.csv
 create mode 100644 drivers/staging/comedi/drivers/ni_routing/ni_device_routes/PCI-6733.csv
 create mode 100644 drivers/staging/comedi/drivers/ni_routing/ni_device_routes/PXI-6030E.csv
 create mode 100644 drivers/staging/comedi/drivers/ni_routing/ni_device_routes/PXI-6224.csv
 create mode 100644 drivers/staging/comedi/drivers/ni_routing/ni_device_routes/PXI-6225.csv
 create mode 100644 drivers/staging/comedi/drivers/ni_routing/ni_device_routes/PXI-6251.csv
 create mode 100644 drivers/staging/comedi/drivers/ni_routing/ni_device_routes/PXI-6733.csv
 create mode 100644 drivers/staging/comedi/drivers/ni_routing/ni_device_routes/PXIe-6251.csv
 create mode 100644 drivers/staging/comedi/drivers/ni_routing/ni_route_values.c
 create mode 100644 drivers/staging/comedi/drivers/ni_routing/ni_route_values/ni_660x.csv
 create mode 100644 drivers/staging/comedi/drivers/ni_routing/ni_route_values/ni_eseries.csv
 create mode 100644 drivers/staging/comedi/drivers/ni_routing/ni_route_values/ni_mseries.csv
 create mode 100644 drivers/staging/comedi/drivers/tests/Makefile
 create mode 100644 drivers/staging/comedi/drivers/tests/example_test.c
 create mode 100644 drivers/staging/comedi/drivers/tests/ni_routes_test.c
 create mode 100644 drivers/staging/comedi/drivers/tests/unittest.h

-- 
1.9.1

_______________________________________________
devel mailing list
devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://driverdev.linuxdriverproject.org/mailman/listinfo/driverdev-devel



[Index of Archives]     [Linux Driver Backports]     [DMA Engine]     [Linux GPIO]     [Linux SPI]     [Video for Linux]     [Linux USB Devel]     [Linux Coverity]     [Linux Audio Users]     [Linux Kernel]     [Linux SCSI]     [Yosemite Backpacking]
  Powered by Linux