Re: [RFC] Simple userspace interface for PCI drivers

[Greg KH <greg@kroah.com>]

On Thu, Aug 31, 2006 at 10:58:54PM +0200, Xavier Bestel wrote:
> Le jeudi 31 ao?t 2006 ? 16:39 -0400, Lee Revell a ?crit :
> > On Thu, 2006-08-31 at 10:30 +0200, Xavier Bestel wrote:
> > > Hi Greg,
> > > 
> > > On Wed, 2006-08-30 at 08:23, Greg KH wrote:
> > > [...]
> > > > Thomas and I lamented that we were getting tired of seeing stuff like
> > > > this, and it was about time that we added the proper code to the kernel
> > > > to provide everything that would be needed in order to write PCI drivers
> > > > in userspace in a sane manner.  Really all that is needed is a way to
> > > > handle the interrupt, everything else can already be done in userspace
> > > > (look at X for an example of this...)
> > > [...]
> > > > So, here's the code. 
> > > 
> > > I know I look like I'm trolling here, but as this is the perfect
> > > stable-binary-driver-ABI some people have been looking for, it would be
> > > wise to make it taint the kernel with its own flag.
> > 
> > Why?  There's no technical or legal requirement for userspace drivers to
> > be GPLed.
> 
> Precisely. How do you know the bugreport you received isn't caused by
> some weird binary userspace driver hosing the PCI bus ?

You don't know that today.  Nothing new here.  So no, adding a taint
flag would achieve nothing.  Unless you want to do that today for all
the ways a userspace program can directly access a PCI device today?

greg k-h