Book Image

Linux Device Driver Development - Second Edition

By : John Madieu
Book Image

Linux Device Driver Development - Second Edition

By: John Madieu

Overview of this book

Linux is by far the most-used kernel on embedded systems. Thanks to its subsystems, the Linux kernel supports almost all of the application fields in the industrial world. This updated second edition of Linux Device Driver Development is a comprehensive introduction to the Linux kernel world and the different subsystems that it is made of, and will be useful for embedded developers from any discipline. You'll learn how to configure, tailor, and build the Linux kernel. Filled with real-world examples, the book covers each of the most-used subsystems in the embedded domains such as GPIO, direct memory access, interrupt management, and I2C/SPI device drivers. This book will show you how Linux abstracts each device from a hardware point of view and how a device is bound to its driver(s). You’ll also see how interrupts are propagated in the system as the book covers the interrupt processing mechanisms in-depth and describes every kernel structure and API involved. This new edition also addresses how not to write device drivers using user space libraries for GPIO clients, I2C, and SPI drivers. By the end of this Linux book, you’ll be able to write device drivers for most of the embedded devices out there.
Table of Contents (23 chapters)
1
Section 1 -Linux Kernel Development Basics
6
Section 2 - Linux Kernel Platform Abstraction and Device Drivers
12
Section 3 - Making the Most out of Your Hardware
18
Section 4 - Misc Kernel Subsystems for the Embedded World

Writing user-space IIO applications

After the long journey through the kernel-side implementation, it might be interesting to have a look at the other side, the user space. IIO support in user space can be handled through sysfs or using libiio, a library that has been specially developed for this purpose and follows the kernel-side evolutions. This library abstracts the hardware's low-level details and provides an easy and comprehensive programming interface that can also be used for complex projects.

In this section, we will be using version 0.21 of the library, whose documentation can be found here: https://analogdevicesinc.github.io/libiio/v0.21/libiio/index.html.

libiio can run on the following:

  • A target, that is, the embedded system running Linux that includes IIO drivers for devices that are physically connected to the system, such as ADCs and DACs.
  • A remote computer connected to the embedded system through a network, USB, or serial connection. This remote...