[linux-dvb] Re: Proposal for new frontend architecture

[Andrew de Quincey <adq_dvb@lidskialf.net>]

> Suggestion from lkml: don't autoprobe at all but have init functions
> which ask the i2c_driver to attach to a specific i2c bus.  The init
> function would be driver specific (cx22702_create() for example) and
> therefore could also take some config info as parameter.  It would also
> create a symbol dependency between the fe driver and the dvb adapter.
>
> Drawback is that a dvb adapter driver which might have different
> frontends attached depending on the card would load _all_ modules and
> use one only _one_ of them (thus waste some RAM), which I don't like
> very much.
>
> On the other hand it would solve all three issues in one go:  Problem #3
> is gone because we don't autoprobe any more, and Problems #1 + #2 can be
> trivialy solved in a type-safe way by passing some args to
> <frontend>_create().  We would automatically insmod the frontend for the
> dvb adapter, which certainly would make life easier for the users.  We
> would also get rid of some module load order issues because the dvb
> adapter will allways be loaded last and unloaded first due to the symbol
> dependency.  Hmm, not bad after all ...

This is similar to the proposal that Holger and I suggested - we just took it 
a step further and removed the frontend dependencies on kernel i2c 
altogether. The advantages of removing kernel i2c from the frontends 
altogether  weree

* It makes it easier for people to reuse the frontends in places where kernel 
i2c is not usable - does this actually occur though?

* It also removes any trace of autoprobing problems since they're not kernel 
i2c_drivers.