Book Image

Mastering Linux Device Driver Development

By : John Madieu
Book Image

Mastering Linux Device Driver Development

By: John Madieu

Overview of this book

Linux is one of the fastest-growing operating systems around the world, and in the last few years, the Linux kernel has evolved significantly to support a wide variety of embedded devices with its improved subsystems and a range of new features. With this book, you’ll find out how you can enhance your skills to write custom device drivers for your Linux operating system. Mastering Linux Device Driver Development provides complete coverage of kernel topics, including video and audio frameworks, that usually go unaddressed. You’ll work with some of the most complex and impactful Linux kernel frameworks, such as PCI, ALSA for SoC, and Video4Linux2, and discover expert tips and best practices along the way. In addition to this, you’ll understand how to make the most of frameworks such as NVMEM and Watchdog. Once you’ve got to grips with Linux kernel helpers, you’ll advance to working with special device types such as Multi-Function Devices (MFD) followed by video and audio device drivers. By the end of this book, you’ll be able to write feature-rich device drivers and integrate them with some of the most complex Linux kernel frameworks, including V4L2 and ALSA for SoC.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
1
Section 1:Kernel Core Frameworks for Embedded Device Driver Development
6
Section 2: Multimedia and Power Saving in Embedded Linux Systems
13
Section 3: Staying Up to Date with Other Linux Kernel Subsystems

Introducing video device drivers – the bridge driver

The bridge driver controls the platform /USB/PCI/... hardware that is responsible for the DMA transfers. This is the driver that handles data streaming from the device. One of the main data structures the bridge driver directly deals with is struct video_device. This structure embeds the entire element needed to perform video streaming, and one of its first interactions with the user space is to create device files in the /dev/ directory.

The struct video_device structure is defined in include/media/v4l2-dev.h, which means the driver code must contain #include <media/v4l2-dev.h>. The following is what this structure looks like from the header file where it is defined:

struct video_device
{
#if defined(CONFIG_MEDIA_CONTROLLER)
    struct media_entity entity;
    struct media_intf_devnode *intf_devnode;
    struct media_pipeline pipe;
#endif
  ...