Digital-tv card drivers and API discussion

[Teemu.Parkkinen at patria.fi]

Hi all,

I am about to write a digital tv-driver for my dvb-c -card. Because FreeBSD
does not yet have
any dvb-devices and I don't have any prior driver development experience, I
have a couple
of questions for you.

1) Should we use Linux-DVB API as a reference,  or should we consider some
changes to it?
The API seems to be constantly changing and improving. Version 3 is
available here:
http://www.linuxtv.org/download/dvb/linux-dvb-api-1.0.0.pdf
but they are currently working on version 4. In my opinion, the API should
be minimal, but
complete, so there is no need to constantly add new features to it.

2) As linux kernel is GPL-licensed, I cannot just port the linux driver to
FreeBSD, right?
In other words, we have to write the driver from scratch. In this case we
don't have to stick
with the Linux DVB-API and therefore I suggest that we give think the api
through before
deciding how we implement it (do we follow linux api or not).

3) Do you have any pointers to good books or other documentation on how to
write device
drivers for UNIX (BSD)? I already have read those from FreeBSD
documentation, but a decent
book would be handy.

- Teemu Parkkinen