RFC: remove support from v4l-dvb for kernels < 2.6.16 After spending some time trying to get v4l-dvb to compile on older kernels I discovered that: - it is OK for kernels >= 2.6.19 - it does not compile at the moment for kernels >= 2.6.16 and < 2.6.19, but that this can be fixed. - that it can be made to compile for kernels >= 2.6.12 and < 2.6.16, although quite a few drivers had to be disabled and looking at the type of compile warnings emitted the result would likely crash, especially the closer one gets to 2.6.12. - that I no longer can compile against older kernels since gcc-4.1.2 no longer accepts some constructions used in those kernel sources. I propose that we remove the support for kernels < 2.6.16. Kernel 2.6.16 is the kernel that's being maintained long-term, so that makes it a good starting point. I know that I get the occasional question about kernel 2v4l/em28xx-audio.c.6.18, so that definitely has to be supported by v4l-dvb, and the differences between 2.6.18 and 2.6.16 are minor, so extending the support to 2.6.16 is not a problem. I did a few scans and of the approximately 932 KERNEL_VERSION checks only 268 remain if we drop support for anything below 2.6.26. That's a major cleanup. Since it is now simply broken for anything below 2.6.19 I think it is a good solution to on the one hand do a major cleanup at the expense of making it unlikely that we will ever support kernels below 2.6.16, and on the other hand at least start to support 2.6.16 and up. I can set up a test build to periodically test if v4l-dvb still compiles on these older kernels (although currently I can only test on a 32 bit Intel platform). I'm also willing to do the clean up (I've always liked throwing away code!). In the long term we should probably review the minimum kernel requirements on a yearly basis and see if we should move it up. Especially major changes in the way the kernel handles device structs can be a big pain to maintain. That's currently the main reason for the breakage of kernels < 2.6.19. Regards, Hans Verkuil _______________________________________________ linux-dvb mailing list linux-dvb@xxxxxxxxxxx http://www.linuxtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/linux-dvb
