porting a webcam

[John-Mark Gurney]

Bernd Walter wrote this message on Fri, Aug 08, 2003 at 18:06 +0200:
> On Fri, Aug 08, 2003 at 07:56:26AM -0700, Paulo Roberto wrote:
> > * You guys think it is too difficult and I should just give up due to
> > my lack of experience? And if I manage to code properly, is it too
> > bureaucratic to get it into the FreeBSD kernel?
> 
> I wouldn't write a kernel driver for a camera and use ugen(4) instead.
> The state of ugen is similar in 4.x and 5.x so you don't have to worry
> about a special version.
> The most important part is getting informations about the protocol
> used by your camera.

I second this.  Another feature of using the ugen userland interface is
that you will get portability to Net/Open for free, and you won't have
to rewrite for -stable/-current either.

I believe that isochornous transfers do not work on -stable currently.
Now that PAE has been back ported to -stable, I will be working on
back porting the usb and busdma changes to -stable.  This would also
include the isochornous support fixes.  (btw, isochronous support was
working in 4.5-stable)

I have started work on defining a new multimedia interface, but I would
go ahead and write your driver and not wait for this.  I'm a bit busy,
and haven't worked on it recently.

Another advantage of doing a userland program is that you can make a
simple port out of it, and don't have to work to get it into the kernel.

-- 
  John-Mark Gurney				Voice: +1 415 225 5579

     "All that I will do, has been done, All that I have, has not."