[linux-dvb] [RFC] Should a DVB frontend report the board name?

[Michael Krufky]

Hartmut Hackmann wrote:
> Hi, folks
> 
> Currently most boards report the type of the channel decoder as
> the frontend name. This has the disadvantage that if you have multiple
> (hybrid) cards with the same channel decoder type, you will not be
> able to distinguish them in the applications. Especially if you want to
> use one of them for analog- and and the other one for digital TV, this
> becomes a problem.
> In my personal repository, i have a change that reports the board name
> instead in saa7134-dvb.
> 
> Should i leave this in or remove it to stay consistent with other
> cards?

In the past, cx88-dvb would report the board name, but I've changed it
to report the frontend name in this changeset:

http://linuxtv.org/hg/v4l-dvb?cmd=changeset;node=d1b4025b0ec8

--- a/linux/drivers/media/video/cx88/cx88-dvb.c	Tue Aug 23 15:58:06 2005 +0000
+++ b/linux/drivers/media/video/cx88/cx88-dvb.c	Thu Aug 25 06:06:52 2005 +0000
@@ -412,11 +412,6 @@ static int dvb_register(struct cx8802_de
 		dev->dvb.frontend->ops->info.frequency_max = dev->core->pll_desc->max;
 	}
 
-	/* Copy the board name into the DVB structure */
-	strlcpy(dev->dvb.frontend->ops->info.name,
-		cx88_boards[dev->core->board].name,
-		sizeof(dev->dvb.frontend->ops->info.name));
-
 	/* register everything */
 	return videobuf_dvb_register(&dev->dvb, THIS_MODULE, dev);
 }


At the time, I thought it would be more consistent to report the name of the
demodulator, since it is in fact the frontend driver that is being reported here.

However, now I am aware that some other dvb drivers report the device name
instead of the frontend driver's name.... For instance, any dvb-usb device
will report the device's textual name instead of the actual frontend's name.

In the case of dvb-usb, I do prefer that the device name is being shown, although
I feel that we should be consistent across the board.

Should I add those lines back to cx88-dvb so that the board's name will be displayed
instead of the frontend driver's name?

I must say, almost all of *my* devices have a lgdt3303 inside them.  Having the actual
device's name being displayed might make it a bit easier to tell the difference
between each of the them.

What does everybody else think?

-Mike Krufky