Re: [RFC] Request API

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

 



Le jeudi 22 mars 2018 à 15:18 +0100, Hans Verkuil a écrit :
> RFC Request API
> ---------------
> 
> This document proposes the public API for handling requests.
> 
> There has been some confusion about how to do this, so this summarizes the
> current approach based on conversations with the various stakeholders today
> (Sakari, Alexandre Courbot, Tomasz Figa and myself).
> 
> The goal is to finalize this so the Request API patch series work can
> continue.
> 
> 1) Additions to the media API
> 
>    Allocate an empty request object:
> 
>    #define MEDIA_IOC_REQUEST_ALLOC _IOW('|', 0x05, __s32 *)

I see this is MEDIA_IOC namespace, I thought that there was an opening
for m2m (codec) to not have to expose a media node. Is this still the
case ?

> 
>    This will return a file descriptor representing the request or an error
>    if it can't allocate the request.
> 
>    If the pointer argument is NULL, then this will just return 0 (if this ioctl
>    is implemented) or -ENOTTY otherwise. This can be used to test whether this
>    ioctl is supported or not without actually having to allocate a request.
> 
> 2) Operations on the request fd
> 
>    You can queue (aka submit) or reinit a request by calling these ioctls on the request fd:
> 
>    #define MEDIA_REQUEST_IOC_QUEUE   _IO('|',  128)
>    #define MEDIA_REQUEST_IOC_REINIT  _IO('|',  129)
> 
>    Note: the original proposal from Alexandre used IOC_SUBMIT instead of
>    IOC_QUEUE. I have a slight preference for QUEUE since that implies that the
>    request end up in a queue of requests. That's less obvious with SUBMIT. I
>    have no strong opinion on this, though.
> 
>    With REINIT you reset the state of the request as if you had just allocated
>    it. You cannot REINIT a request if the request is queued but not yet completed.
>    It will return -EBUSY in that case.
> 
>    Calling QUEUE if the request is already queued or completed will return -EBUSY
>    as well. Or would -EPERM be better? I'm open to suggestions. Either error code
>    will work, I think.
> 
>    You can poll the request fd to wait for it to complete. A request is complete
>    if all the associated buffers are available for dequeuing and all the associated
>    controls (such as controls containing e.g. statistics) are updated with their
>    final values.
> 
>    To free a request you close the request fd. Note that it may still be in
>    use internally, so this has to be refcounted.
> 
>    Requests only contain the changes since the previously queued request or
>    since the current hardware state if no other requests are queued.
> 
> 3) To associate a v4l2 buffer with a request the 'reserved' field in struct
>    v4l2_buffer is used to store the request fd. Buffers won't be 'prepared'
>    until the request is queued since the request may contain information that
>    is needed to prepare the buffer.
> 
>    Queuing a buffer without a request after a buffer with a request is equivalent
>    to queuing a request containing just that buffer and nothing else. I.e. it will
>    just use whatever values the hardware has at the time of processing.
> 
> 4) To associate v4l2 controls with a request we take the first of the
>    'reserved[2]' array elements in struct v4l2_ext_controls and use it to store
>    the request fd.
> 
>    When querying a control value from a request it will return the newest
>    value in the list of pending requests, or the current hardware value if
>    is not set in any of the pending requests.
> 
>    Setting controls without specifying a request fd will just act like it does
>    today: the hardware is immediately updated. This can cause race conditions
>    if the same control is also specified in a queued request: it is not defined
>    which will be set first. It is therefor not a good idea to set the same
>    control directly as well as set it as part of a request.
> 
> Notes:
> 
> - Earlier versions of this API had a TRY command as well to validate the
>   request. I'm not sure that is useful so I dropped it, but it can easily
>   be added if there is a good use-case for it. Traditionally within V4L the
>   TRY ioctl will also update wrong values to something that works, but that
>   is not the intention here as far as I understand it. So the validation
>   step can also be done when the request is queued and, if it fails, it will
>   just return an error.

I think it's worth to understand that this would mimic DRM Atomic
interface. The reason atomic operation can be tried like this is
because it's not possible to generically represent all the constraints.
So this would only be useful we we do have this issue.

> 
> - If due to performance reasons we will have to allocate/queue/reinit multiple
>   requests with a single ioctl, then we will have to add new ioctls to the
>   media device. At this moment in time it is not clear that this is really
>   needed and it certainly isn't needed for the stateless codec support that
>   we are looking at now.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> 	Hans

Attachment: signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part


[Index of Archives]     [Linux Input]     [Video for Linux]     [Gstreamer Embedded]     [Mplayer Users]     [Linux USB Devel]     [Linux Audio Users]     [Linux Kernel]     [Linux SCSI]     [Yosemite Backpacking]
  Powered by Linux