On Tue, 17 Feb 2009 14:23:27 +0100 Jean Delvare <khali@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Hi Mauro, > > These days I am helping Hans Verkuil convert the last users of the > legacy i2c device driver binding model to the new, standard binding > model. It turns out to be a very complex task because the v4l-dvb > repository is supposed to still support kernels as old as 2.6.16, while > the initial support for the new i2c binding model was added in kernel > 2.6.22 (and even that is somewhat different from what is upstream now.) > This forces us to add quirks all around the place, which will surely > result in bugs because the code becomes hard to read, understand and > maintain. > > In fact, without this need for backwards compatibility, I would > probably have been able to convert most of the drivers myself, without > Hans' help, and this would already be all done. But as things stand > today, he has to do most of the work, and our progress is slow. > > So I would like you to consider changing the minimum kernel version > supported by the v4l-dvb repository from 2.6.16 to at least 2.6.22. > Ideal for us would even be 2.6.26, but I would understand that this is > too recent for you. Kernel 2.6.22 is one year and a half old, I > honestly doubt that people fighting to get their brand new TV adapter > to work are using anything older. As a matter of fact, kernel 2.6.22 is > what openSUSE 10.3 has, and this is the oldest openSUSE product that is > still maintained. > > I understand and respect your will to let a large range of users build > the v4l-dvb repository, but at some point the cost for developers seems > to be too high, so there's a balance to be found between users and > developers. At the moment the balance isn't right IMHO. In my case, I use RHEL 5.3 that comes with 2.6.18. I need at least to have compatibility until this version, otherwise it will be harder to me to test things, since most of the time I need to run RHEL 5 kernel. I know that other developers also use RHEL 5 on their environments. Cheers, Mauro -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-media" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
