From: Matan Ziv-Av (matan@svgalib.org)
Date: Sat 23 Nov 2002 - 12:42:41 IST
On Sat, 23 Nov 2002, Marc E. Fiuczynski wrote:
> Could someone briefly describe how the driver development for SVGAlib,
> Xfree86, and the Linux framebuffer differ? At the core, aren't these drivers
> peeking and poking at the same registers and stuff? Has there been any
> effort to unify the driver development, so that everyone benefits?
XFree86 drivers are most complicated, as they try to use the most of the
card's features. FB drivers are simpler, since they don't use a lot of
acceleration features (mainly bitblt and cursor). Svgalib drivers are
simplest, since they only use the minimum of features - setting a
graphics mode. They also run in different modes -
XFree86 - user space, many OS.
FB - kernel space, linux.
svgalib - user space, linux (though there is a freebsd port).
There is no much sense in sharing complete drivers, since they are quite
different. There is a lot of sense in sharing specific code snippets -
PLL calculations, CRTC calculation, and those are indeed shared between
thpse three drivers. Usually from XFree86 to FB/svgalib, since only
XFree86 developer have the documentation of the chipset.
--
Matan Ziv-Av. matan@svgalib.org
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