v4l2-framework.txt 30 KB

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  1. Overview of the V4L2 driver framework
  2. =====================================
  3. This text documents the various structures provided by the V4L2 framework and
  4. their relationships.
  5. Introduction
  6. ------------
  7. The V4L2 drivers tend to be very complex due to the complexity of the
  8. hardware: most devices have multiple ICs, export multiple device nodes in
  9. /dev, and create also non-V4L2 devices such as DVB, ALSA, FB, I2C and input
  10. (IR) devices.
  11. Especially the fact that V4L2 drivers have to setup supporting ICs to
  12. do audio/video muxing/encoding/decoding makes it more complex than most.
  13. Usually these ICs are connected to the main bridge driver through one or
  14. more I2C busses, but other busses can also be used. Such devices are
  15. called 'sub-devices'.
  16. For a long time the framework was limited to the video_device struct for
  17. creating V4L device nodes and video_buf for handling the video buffers
  18. (note that this document does not discuss the video_buf framework).
  19. This meant that all drivers had to do the setup of device instances and
  20. connecting to sub-devices themselves. Some of this is quite complicated
  21. to do right and many drivers never did do it correctly.
  22. There is also a lot of common code that could never be refactored due to
  23. the lack of a framework.
  24. So this framework sets up the basic building blocks that all drivers
  25. need and this same framework should make it much easier to refactor
  26. common code into utility functions shared by all drivers.
  27. Structure of a driver
  28. ---------------------
  29. All drivers have the following structure:
  30. 1) A struct for each device instance containing the device state.
  31. 2) A way of initializing and commanding sub-devices (if any).
  32. 3) Creating V4L2 device nodes (/dev/videoX, /dev/vbiX and /dev/radioX)
  33. and keeping track of device-node specific data.
  34. 4) Filehandle-specific structs containing per-filehandle data;
  35. 5) video buffer handling.
  36. This is a rough schematic of how it all relates:
  37. device instances
  38. |
  39. +-sub-device instances
  40. |
  41. \-V4L2 device nodes
  42. |
  43. \-filehandle instances
  44. Structure of the framework
  45. --------------------------
  46. The framework closely resembles the driver structure: it has a v4l2_device
  47. struct for the device instance data, a v4l2_subdev struct to refer to
  48. sub-device instances, the video_device struct stores V4L2 device node data
  49. and in the future a v4l2_fh struct will keep track of filehandle instances
  50. (this is not yet implemented).
  51. struct v4l2_device
  52. ------------------
  53. Each device instance is represented by a struct v4l2_device (v4l2-device.h).
  54. Very simple devices can just allocate this struct, but most of the time you
  55. would embed this struct inside a larger struct.
  56. You must register the device instance:
  57. v4l2_device_register(struct device *dev, struct v4l2_device *v4l2_dev);
  58. Registration will initialize the v4l2_device struct and link dev->driver_data
  59. to v4l2_dev. If v4l2_dev->name is empty then it will be set to a value derived
  60. from dev (driver name followed by the bus_id, to be precise). If you set it
  61. up before calling v4l2_device_register then it will be untouched. If dev is
  62. NULL, then you *must* setup v4l2_dev->name before calling v4l2_device_register.
  63. You can use v4l2_device_set_name() to set the name based on a driver name and
  64. a driver-global atomic_t instance. This will generate names like ivtv0, ivtv1,
  65. etc. If the name ends with a digit, then it will insert a dash: cx18-0,
  66. cx18-1, etc. This function returns the instance number.
  67. The first 'dev' argument is normally the struct device pointer of a pci_dev,
  68. usb_interface or platform_device. It is rare for dev to be NULL, but it happens
  69. with ISA devices or when one device creates multiple PCI devices, thus making
  70. it impossible to associate v4l2_dev with a particular parent.
  71. You can also supply a notify() callback that can be called by sub-devices to
  72. notify you of events. Whether you need to set this depends on the sub-device.
  73. Any notifications a sub-device supports must be defined in a header in
  74. include/media/<subdevice>.h.
  75. You unregister with:
  76. v4l2_device_unregister(struct v4l2_device *v4l2_dev);
  77. Unregistering will also automatically unregister all subdevs from the device.
  78. If you have a hotpluggable device (e.g. a USB device), then when a disconnect
  79. happens the parent device becomes invalid. Since v4l2_device has a pointer to
  80. that parent device it has to be cleared as well to mark that the parent is
  81. gone. To do this call:
  82. v4l2_device_disconnect(struct v4l2_device *v4l2_dev);
  83. This does *not* unregister the subdevs, so you still need to call the
  84. v4l2_device_unregister() function for that. If your driver is not hotpluggable,
  85. then there is no need to call v4l2_device_disconnect().
  86. Sometimes you need to iterate over all devices registered by a specific
  87. driver. This is usually the case if multiple device drivers use the same
  88. hardware. E.g. the ivtvfb driver is a framebuffer driver that uses the ivtv
  89. hardware. The same is true for alsa drivers for example.
  90. You can iterate over all registered devices as follows:
  91. static int callback(struct device *dev, void *p)
  92. {
  93. struct v4l2_device *v4l2_dev = dev_get_drvdata(dev);
  94. /* test if this device was inited */
  95. if (v4l2_dev == NULL)
  96. return 0;
  97. ...
  98. return 0;
  99. }
  100. int iterate(void *p)
  101. {
  102. struct device_driver *drv;
  103. int err;
  104. /* Find driver 'ivtv' on the PCI bus.
  105. pci_bus_type is a global. For USB busses use usb_bus_type. */
  106. drv = driver_find("ivtv", &pci_bus_type);
  107. /* iterate over all ivtv device instances */
  108. err = driver_for_each_device(drv, NULL, p, callback);
  109. put_driver(drv);
  110. return err;
  111. }
  112. Sometimes you need to keep a running counter of the device instance. This is
  113. commonly used to map a device instance to an index of a module option array.
  114. The recommended approach is as follows:
  115. static atomic_t drv_instance = ATOMIC_INIT(0);
  116. static int __devinit drv_probe(struct pci_dev *pdev,
  117. const struct pci_device_id *pci_id)
  118. {
  119. ...
  120. state->instance = atomic_inc_return(&drv_instance) - 1;
  121. }
  122. struct v4l2_subdev
  123. ------------------
  124. Many drivers need to communicate with sub-devices. These devices can do all
  125. sort of tasks, but most commonly they handle audio and/or video muxing,
  126. encoding or decoding. For webcams common sub-devices are sensors and camera
  127. controllers.
  128. Usually these are I2C devices, but not necessarily. In order to provide the
  129. driver with a consistent interface to these sub-devices the v4l2_subdev struct
  130. (v4l2-subdev.h) was created.
  131. Each sub-device driver must have a v4l2_subdev struct. This struct can be
  132. stand-alone for simple sub-devices or it might be embedded in a larger struct
  133. if more state information needs to be stored. Usually there is a low-level
  134. device struct (e.g. i2c_client) that contains the device data as setup
  135. by the kernel. It is recommended to store that pointer in the private
  136. data of v4l2_subdev using v4l2_set_subdevdata(). That makes it easy to go
  137. from a v4l2_subdev to the actual low-level bus-specific device data.
  138. You also need a way to go from the low-level struct to v4l2_subdev. For the
  139. common i2c_client struct the i2c_set_clientdata() call is used to store a
  140. v4l2_subdev pointer, for other busses you may have to use other methods.
  141. Bridges might also need to store per-subdev private data, such as a pointer to
  142. bridge-specific per-subdev private data. The v4l2_subdev structure provides
  143. host private data for that purpose that can be accessed with
  144. v4l2_get_subdev_hostdata() and v4l2_set_subdev_hostdata().
  145. From the bridge driver perspective you load the sub-device module and somehow
  146. obtain the v4l2_subdev pointer. For i2c devices this is easy: you call
  147. i2c_get_clientdata(). For other busses something similar needs to be done.
  148. Helper functions exists for sub-devices on an I2C bus that do most of this
  149. tricky work for you.
  150. Each v4l2_subdev contains function pointers that sub-device drivers can
  151. implement (or leave NULL if it is not applicable). Since sub-devices can do
  152. so many different things and you do not want to end up with a huge ops struct
  153. of which only a handful of ops are commonly implemented, the function pointers
  154. are sorted according to category and each category has its own ops struct.
  155. The top-level ops struct contains pointers to the category ops structs, which
  156. may be NULL if the subdev driver does not support anything from that category.
  157. It looks like this:
  158. struct v4l2_subdev_core_ops {
  159. int (*g_chip_ident)(struct v4l2_subdev *sd, struct v4l2_dbg_chip_ident *chip);
  160. int (*log_status)(struct v4l2_subdev *sd);
  161. int (*init)(struct v4l2_subdev *sd, u32 val);
  162. ...
  163. };
  164. struct v4l2_subdev_tuner_ops {
  165. ...
  166. };
  167. struct v4l2_subdev_audio_ops {
  168. ...
  169. };
  170. struct v4l2_subdev_video_ops {
  171. ...
  172. };
  173. struct v4l2_subdev_ops {
  174. const struct v4l2_subdev_core_ops *core;
  175. const struct v4l2_subdev_tuner_ops *tuner;
  176. const struct v4l2_subdev_audio_ops *audio;
  177. const struct v4l2_subdev_video_ops *video;
  178. };
  179. The core ops are common to all subdevs, the other categories are implemented
  180. depending on the sub-device. E.g. a video device is unlikely to support the
  181. audio ops and vice versa.
  182. This setup limits the number of function pointers while still making it easy
  183. to add new ops and categories.
  184. A sub-device driver initializes the v4l2_subdev struct using:
  185. v4l2_subdev_init(sd, &ops);
  186. Afterwards you need to initialize subdev->name with a unique name and set the
  187. module owner. This is done for you if you use the i2c helper functions.
  188. A device (bridge) driver needs to register the v4l2_subdev with the
  189. v4l2_device:
  190. int err = v4l2_device_register_subdev(v4l2_dev, sd);
  191. This can fail if the subdev module disappeared before it could be registered.
  192. After this function was called successfully the subdev->dev field points to
  193. the v4l2_device.
  194. You can unregister a sub-device using:
  195. v4l2_device_unregister_subdev(sd);
  196. Afterwards the subdev module can be unloaded and sd->dev == NULL.
  197. You can call an ops function either directly:
  198. err = sd->ops->core->g_chip_ident(sd, &chip);
  199. but it is better and easier to use this macro:
  200. err = v4l2_subdev_call(sd, core, g_chip_ident, &chip);
  201. The macro will to the right NULL pointer checks and returns -ENODEV if subdev
  202. is NULL, -ENOIOCTLCMD if either subdev->core or subdev->core->g_chip_ident is
  203. NULL, or the actual result of the subdev->ops->core->g_chip_ident ops.
  204. It is also possible to call all or a subset of the sub-devices:
  205. v4l2_device_call_all(v4l2_dev, 0, core, g_chip_ident, &chip);
  206. Any subdev that does not support this ops is skipped and error results are
  207. ignored. If you want to check for errors use this:
  208. err = v4l2_device_call_until_err(v4l2_dev, 0, core, g_chip_ident, &chip);
  209. Any error except -ENOIOCTLCMD will exit the loop with that error. If no
  210. errors (except -ENOIOCTLCMD) occured, then 0 is returned.
  211. The second argument to both calls is a group ID. If 0, then all subdevs are
  212. called. If non-zero, then only those whose group ID match that value will
  213. be called. Before a bridge driver registers a subdev it can set sd->grp_id
  214. to whatever value it wants (it's 0 by default). This value is owned by the
  215. bridge driver and the sub-device driver will never modify or use it.
  216. The group ID gives the bridge driver more control how callbacks are called.
  217. For example, there may be multiple audio chips on a board, each capable of
  218. changing the volume. But usually only one will actually be used when the
  219. user want to change the volume. You can set the group ID for that subdev to
  220. e.g. AUDIO_CONTROLLER and specify that as the group ID value when calling
  221. v4l2_device_call_all(). That ensures that it will only go to the subdev
  222. that needs it.
  223. If the sub-device needs to notify its v4l2_device parent of an event, then
  224. it can call v4l2_subdev_notify(sd, notification, arg). This macro checks
  225. whether there is a notify() callback defined and returns -ENODEV if not.
  226. Otherwise the result of the notify() call is returned.
  227. The advantage of using v4l2_subdev is that it is a generic struct and does
  228. not contain any knowledge about the underlying hardware. So a driver might
  229. contain several subdevs that use an I2C bus, but also a subdev that is
  230. controlled through GPIO pins. This distinction is only relevant when setting
  231. up the device, but once the subdev is registered it is completely transparent.
  232. V4L2 sub-device userspace API
  233. -----------------------------
  234. Beside exposing a kernel API through the v4l2_subdev_ops structure, V4L2
  235. sub-devices can also be controlled directly by userspace applications.
  236. Device nodes named v4l-subdevX can be created in /dev to access sub-devices
  237. directly. If a sub-device supports direct userspace configuration it must set
  238. the V4L2_SUBDEV_FL_HAS_DEVNODE flag before being registered.
  239. After registering sub-devices, the v4l2_device driver can create device nodes
  240. for all registered sub-devices marked with V4L2_SUBDEV_FL_HAS_DEVNODE by calling
  241. v4l2_device_register_subdev_nodes(). Those device nodes will be automatically
  242. removed when sub-devices are unregistered.
  243. The device node handles a subset of the V4L2 API.
  244. VIDIOC_QUERYCTRL
  245. VIDIOC_QUERYMENU
  246. VIDIOC_G_CTRL
  247. VIDIOC_S_CTRL
  248. VIDIOC_G_EXT_CTRLS
  249. VIDIOC_S_EXT_CTRLS
  250. VIDIOC_TRY_EXT_CTRLS
  251. The controls ioctls are identical to the ones defined in V4L2. They
  252. behave identically, with the only exception that they deal only with
  253. controls implemented in the sub-device. Depending on the driver, those
  254. controls can be also be accessed through one (or several) V4L2 device
  255. nodes.
  256. VIDIOC_DQEVENT
  257. VIDIOC_SUBSCRIBE_EVENT
  258. VIDIOC_UNSUBSCRIBE_EVENT
  259. The events ioctls are identical to the ones defined in V4L2. They
  260. behave identically, with the only exception that they deal only with
  261. events generated by the sub-device. Depending on the driver, those
  262. events can also be reported by one (or several) V4L2 device nodes.
  263. Sub-device drivers that want to use events need to set the
  264. V4L2_SUBDEV_USES_EVENTS v4l2_subdev::flags and initialize
  265. v4l2_subdev::nevents to events queue depth before registering the
  266. sub-device. After registration events can be queued as usual on the
  267. v4l2_subdev::devnode device node.
  268. To properly support events, the poll() file operation is also
  269. implemented.
  270. I2C sub-device drivers
  271. ----------------------
  272. Since these drivers are so common, special helper functions are available to
  273. ease the use of these drivers (v4l2-common.h).
  274. The recommended method of adding v4l2_subdev support to an I2C driver is to
  275. embed the v4l2_subdev struct into the state struct that is created for each
  276. I2C device instance. Very simple devices have no state struct and in that case
  277. you can just create a v4l2_subdev directly.
  278. A typical state struct would look like this (where 'chipname' is replaced by
  279. the name of the chip):
  280. struct chipname_state {
  281. struct v4l2_subdev sd;
  282. ... /* additional state fields */
  283. };
  284. Initialize the v4l2_subdev struct as follows:
  285. v4l2_i2c_subdev_init(&state->sd, client, subdev_ops);
  286. This function will fill in all the fields of v4l2_subdev and ensure that the
  287. v4l2_subdev and i2c_client both point to one another.
  288. You should also add a helper inline function to go from a v4l2_subdev pointer
  289. to a chipname_state struct:
  290. static inline struct chipname_state *to_state(struct v4l2_subdev *sd)
  291. {
  292. return container_of(sd, struct chipname_state, sd);
  293. }
  294. Use this to go from the v4l2_subdev struct to the i2c_client struct:
  295. struct i2c_client *client = v4l2_get_subdevdata(sd);
  296. And this to go from an i2c_client to a v4l2_subdev struct:
  297. struct v4l2_subdev *sd = i2c_get_clientdata(client);
  298. Make sure to call v4l2_device_unregister_subdev(sd) when the remove() callback
  299. is called. This will unregister the sub-device from the bridge driver. It is
  300. safe to call this even if the sub-device was never registered.
  301. You need to do this because when the bridge driver destroys the i2c adapter
  302. the remove() callbacks are called of the i2c devices on that adapter.
  303. After that the corresponding v4l2_subdev structures are invalid, so they
  304. have to be unregistered first. Calling v4l2_device_unregister_subdev(sd)
  305. from the remove() callback ensures that this is always done correctly.
  306. The bridge driver also has some helper functions it can use:
  307. struct v4l2_subdev *sd = v4l2_i2c_new_subdev(v4l2_dev, adapter,
  308. "module_foo", "chipid", 0x36, NULL);
  309. This loads the given module (can be NULL if no module needs to be loaded) and
  310. calls i2c_new_device() with the given i2c_adapter and chip/address arguments.
  311. If all goes well, then it registers the subdev with the v4l2_device.
  312. You can also use the last argument of v4l2_i2c_new_subdev() to pass an array
  313. of possible I2C addresses that it should probe. These probe addresses are
  314. only used if the previous argument is 0. A non-zero argument means that you
  315. know the exact i2c address so in that case no probing will take place.
  316. Both functions return NULL if something went wrong.
  317. Note that the chipid you pass to v4l2_i2c_new_subdev() is usually
  318. the same as the module name. It allows you to specify a chip variant, e.g.
  319. "saa7114" or "saa7115". In general though the i2c driver autodetects this.
  320. The use of chipid is something that needs to be looked at more closely at a
  321. later date. It differs between i2c drivers and as such can be confusing.
  322. To see which chip variants are supported you can look in the i2c driver code
  323. for the i2c_device_id table. This lists all the possibilities.
  324. There are two more helper functions:
  325. v4l2_i2c_new_subdev_cfg: this function adds new irq and platform_data
  326. arguments and has both 'addr' and 'probed_addrs' arguments: if addr is not
  327. 0 then that will be used (non-probing variant), otherwise the probed_addrs
  328. are probed.
  329. For example: this will probe for address 0x10:
  330. struct v4l2_subdev *sd = v4l2_i2c_new_subdev_cfg(v4l2_dev, adapter,
  331. "module_foo", "chipid", 0, NULL, 0, I2C_ADDRS(0x10));
  332. v4l2_i2c_new_subdev_board uses an i2c_board_info struct which is passed
  333. to the i2c driver and replaces the irq, platform_data and addr arguments.
  334. If the subdev supports the s_config core ops, then that op is called with
  335. the irq and platform_data arguments after the subdev was setup. The older
  336. v4l2_i2c_new_(probed_)subdev functions will call s_config as well, but with
  337. irq set to 0 and platform_data set to NULL.
  338. struct video_device
  339. -------------------
  340. The actual device nodes in the /dev directory are created using the
  341. video_device struct (v4l2-dev.h). This struct can either be allocated
  342. dynamically or embedded in a larger struct.
  343. To allocate it dynamically use:
  344. struct video_device *vdev = video_device_alloc();
  345. if (vdev == NULL)
  346. return -ENOMEM;
  347. vdev->release = video_device_release;
  348. If you embed it in a larger struct, then you must set the release()
  349. callback to your own function:
  350. struct video_device *vdev = &my_vdev->vdev;
  351. vdev->release = my_vdev_release;
  352. The release callback must be set and it is called when the last user
  353. of the video device exits.
  354. The default video_device_release() callback just calls kfree to free the
  355. allocated memory.
  356. You should also set these fields:
  357. - v4l2_dev: set to the v4l2_device parent device.
  358. - name: set to something descriptive and unique.
  359. - fops: set to the v4l2_file_operations struct.
  360. - ioctl_ops: if you use the v4l2_ioctl_ops to simplify ioctl maintenance
  361. (highly recommended to use this and it might become compulsory in the
  362. future!), then set this to your v4l2_ioctl_ops struct.
  363. - lock: leave to NULL if you want to do all the locking in the driver.
  364. Otherwise you give it a pointer to a struct mutex_lock and before any
  365. of the v4l2_file_operations is called this lock will be taken by the
  366. core and released afterwards.
  367. - parent: you only set this if v4l2_device was registered with NULL as
  368. the parent device struct. This only happens in cases where one hardware
  369. device has multiple PCI devices that all share the same v4l2_device core.
  370. The cx88 driver is an example of this: one core v4l2_device struct, but
  371. it is used by both an raw video PCI device (cx8800) and a MPEG PCI device
  372. (cx8802). Since the v4l2_device cannot be associated with a particular
  373. PCI device it is setup without a parent device. But when the struct
  374. video_device is setup you do know which parent PCI device to use.
  375. If you use v4l2_ioctl_ops, then you should set either .unlocked_ioctl or
  376. .ioctl to video_ioctl2 in your v4l2_file_operations struct.
  377. The v4l2_file_operations struct is a subset of file_operations. The main
  378. difference is that the inode argument is omitted since it is never used.
  379. v4l2_file_operations and locking
  380. --------------------------------
  381. You can set a pointer to a mutex_lock in struct video_device. Usually this
  382. will be either a top-level mutex or a mutex per device node. If you want
  383. finer-grained locking then you have to set it to NULL and do you own locking.
  384. If a lock is specified then all file operations will be serialized on that
  385. lock. If you use videobuf then you must pass the same lock to the videobuf
  386. queue initialize function: if videobuf has to wait for a frame to arrive, then
  387. it will temporarily unlock the lock and relock it afterwards. If your driver
  388. also waits in the code, then you should do the same to allow other processes
  389. to access the device node while the first process is waiting for something.
  390. The implementation of a hotplug disconnect should also take the lock before
  391. calling v4l2_device_disconnect.
  392. video_device registration
  393. -------------------------
  394. Next you register the video device: this will create the character device
  395. for you.
  396. err = video_register_device(vdev, VFL_TYPE_GRABBER, -1);
  397. if (err) {
  398. video_device_release(vdev); /* or kfree(my_vdev); */
  399. return err;
  400. }
  401. Which device is registered depends on the type argument. The following
  402. types exist:
  403. VFL_TYPE_GRABBER: videoX for video input/output devices
  404. VFL_TYPE_VBI: vbiX for vertical blank data (i.e. closed captions, teletext)
  405. VFL_TYPE_RADIO: radioX for radio tuners
  406. The last argument gives you a certain amount of control over the device
  407. device node number used (i.e. the X in videoX). Normally you will pass -1
  408. to let the v4l2 framework pick the first free number. But sometimes users
  409. want to select a specific node number. It is common that drivers allow
  410. the user to select a specific device node number through a driver module
  411. option. That number is then passed to this function and video_register_device
  412. will attempt to select that device node number. If that number was already
  413. in use, then the next free device node number will be selected and it
  414. will send a warning to the kernel log.
  415. Another use-case is if a driver creates many devices. In that case it can
  416. be useful to place different video devices in separate ranges. For example,
  417. video capture devices start at 0, video output devices start at 16.
  418. So you can use the last argument to specify a minimum device node number
  419. and the v4l2 framework will try to pick the first free number that is equal
  420. or higher to what you passed. If that fails, then it will just pick the
  421. first free number.
  422. Since in this case you do not care about a warning about not being able
  423. to select the specified device node number, you can call the function
  424. video_register_device_no_warn() instead.
  425. Whenever a device node is created some attributes are also created for you.
  426. If you look in /sys/class/video4linux you see the devices. Go into e.g.
  427. video0 and you will see 'name' and 'index' attributes. The 'name' attribute
  428. is the 'name' field of the video_device struct.
  429. The 'index' attribute is the index of the device node: for each call to
  430. video_register_device() the index is just increased by 1. The first video
  431. device node you register always starts with index 0.
  432. Users can setup udev rules that utilize the index attribute to make fancy
  433. device names (e.g. 'mpegX' for MPEG video capture device nodes).
  434. After the device was successfully registered, then you can use these fields:
  435. - vfl_type: the device type passed to video_register_device.
  436. - minor: the assigned device minor number.
  437. - num: the device node number (i.e. the X in videoX).
  438. - index: the device index number.
  439. If the registration failed, then you need to call video_device_release()
  440. to free the allocated video_device struct, or free your own struct if the
  441. video_device was embedded in it. The vdev->release() callback will never
  442. be called if the registration failed, nor should you ever attempt to
  443. unregister the device if the registration failed.
  444. video_device cleanup
  445. --------------------
  446. When the video device nodes have to be removed, either during the unload
  447. of the driver or because the USB device was disconnected, then you should
  448. unregister them:
  449. video_unregister_device(vdev);
  450. This will remove the device nodes from sysfs (causing udev to remove them
  451. from /dev).
  452. After video_unregister_device() returns no new opens can be done. However,
  453. in the case of USB devices some application might still have one of these
  454. device nodes open. So after the unregister all file operations (except
  455. release, of course) will return an error as well.
  456. When the last user of the video device node exits, then the vdev->release()
  457. callback is called and you can do the final cleanup there.
  458. video_device helper functions
  459. -----------------------------
  460. There are a few useful helper functions:
  461. - file/video_device private data
  462. You can set/get driver private data in the video_device struct using:
  463. void *video_get_drvdata(struct video_device *vdev);
  464. void video_set_drvdata(struct video_device *vdev, void *data);
  465. Note that you can safely call video_set_drvdata() before calling
  466. video_register_device().
  467. And this function:
  468. struct video_device *video_devdata(struct file *file);
  469. returns the video_device belonging to the file struct.
  470. The video_drvdata function combines video_get_drvdata with video_devdata:
  471. void *video_drvdata(struct file *file);
  472. You can go from a video_device struct to the v4l2_device struct using:
  473. struct v4l2_device *v4l2_dev = vdev->v4l2_dev;
  474. - Device node name
  475. The video_device node kernel name can be retrieved using
  476. const char *video_device_node_name(struct video_device *vdev);
  477. The name is used as a hint by userspace tools such as udev. The function
  478. should be used where possible instead of accessing the video_device::num and
  479. video_device::minor fields.
  480. video buffer helper functions
  481. -----------------------------
  482. The v4l2 core API provides a set of standard methods (called "videobuf")
  483. for dealing with video buffers. Those methods allow a driver to implement
  484. read(), mmap() and overlay() in a consistent way. There are currently
  485. methods for using video buffers on devices that supports DMA with
  486. scatter/gather method (videobuf-dma-sg), DMA with linear access
  487. (videobuf-dma-contig), and vmalloced buffers, mostly used on USB drivers
  488. (videobuf-vmalloc).
  489. Please see Documentation/video4linux/videobuf for more information on how
  490. to use the videobuf layer.
  491. struct v4l2_fh
  492. --------------
  493. struct v4l2_fh provides a way to easily keep file handle specific data
  494. that is used by the V4L2 framework. Using v4l2_fh is optional for
  495. drivers.
  496. The users of v4l2_fh (in the V4L2 framework, not the driver) know
  497. whether a driver uses v4l2_fh as its file->private_data pointer by
  498. testing the V4L2_FL_USES_V4L2_FH bit in video_device->flags.
  499. Useful functions:
  500. - v4l2_fh_init()
  501. Initialise the file handle. This *MUST* be performed in the driver's
  502. v4l2_file_operations->open() handler.
  503. - v4l2_fh_add()
  504. Add a v4l2_fh to video_device file handle list. May be called after
  505. initialising the file handle.
  506. - v4l2_fh_del()
  507. Unassociate the file handle from video_device(). The file handle
  508. exit function may now be called.
  509. - v4l2_fh_exit()
  510. Uninitialise the file handle. After uninitialisation the v4l2_fh
  511. memory can be freed.
  512. struct v4l2_fh is allocated as a part of the driver's own file handle
  513. structure and is set to file->private_data in the driver's open
  514. function by the driver. Drivers can extract their own file handle
  515. structure by using the container_of macro. Example:
  516. struct my_fh {
  517. int blah;
  518. struct v4l2_fh fh;
  519. };
  520. ...
  521. int my_open(struct file *file)
  522. {
  523. struct my_fh *my_fh;
  524. struct video_device *vfd;
  525. int ret;
  526. ...
  527. ret = v4l2_fh_init(&my_fh->fh, vfd);
  528. if (ret)
  529. return ret;
  530. v4l2_fh_add(&my_fh->fh);
  531. file->private_data = &my_fh->fh;
  532. ...
  533. }
  534. int my_release(struct file *file)
  535. {
  536. struct v4l2_fh *fh = file->private_data;
  537. struct my_fh *my_fh = container_of(fh, struct my_fh, fh);
  538. ...
  539. }
  540. V4L2 events
  541. -----------
  542. The V4L2 events provide a generic way to pass events to user space.
  543. The driver must use v4l2_fh to be able to support V4L2 events.
  544. Useful functions:
  545. - v4l2_event_alloc()
  546. To use events, the driver must allocate events for the file handle. By
  547. calling the function more than once, the driver may assure that at least n
  548. events in total have been allocated. The function may not be called in
  549. atomic context.
  550. - v4l2_event_queue()
  551. Queue events to video device. The driver's only responsibility is to fill
  552. in the type and the data fields. The other fields will be filled in by
  553. V4L2.
  554. - v4l2_event_subscribe()
  555. The video_device->ioctl_ops->vidioc_subscribe_event must check the driver
  556. is able to produce events with specified event id. Then it calls
  557. v4l2_event_subscribe() to subscribe the event.
  558. - v4l2_event_unsubscribe()
  559. vidioc_unsubscribe_event in struct v4l2_ioctl_ops. A driver may use
  560. v4l2_event_unsubscribe() directly unless it wants to be involved in
  561. unsubscription process.
  562. The special type V4L2_EVENT_ALL may be used to unsubscribe all events. The
  563. drivers may want to handle this in a special way.
  564. - v4l2_event_pending()
  565. Returns the number of pending events. Useful when implementing poll.
  566. Drivers do not initialise events directly. The events are initialised
  567. through v4l2_fh_init() if video_device->ioctl_ops->vidioc_subscribe_event is
  568. non-NULL. This *MUST* be performed in the driver's
  569. v4l2_file_operations->open() handler.
  570. Events are delivered to user space through the poll system call. The driver
  571. can use v4l2_fh->events->wait wait_queue_head_t as the argument for
  572. poll_wait().
  573. There are standard and private events. New standard events must use the
  574. smallest available event type. The drivers must allocate their events from
  575. their own class starting from class base. Class base is
  576. V4L2_EVENT_PRIVATE_START + n * 1000 where n is the lowest available number.
  577. The first event type in the class is reserved for future use, so the first
  578. available event type is 'class base + 1'.
  579. An example on how the V4L2 events may be used can be found in the OMAP
  580. 3 ISP driver available at <URL:http://gitorious.org/omap3camera> as of
  581. writing this.