RE: [PATCH v6 09/10] arm64: efi: Export screen_info

[Michael Kelley <mikelley@microsoft.com>]

From: Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de> Sent: Wednesday, March 18, 2020 2:27 AM
> 
> On Wed, Mar 18, 2020 at 1:18 AM Michael Kelley <mikelley@microsoft.com> wrote:
> > From: Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de>
> > > On Sat, Mar 14, 2020 at 4:36 PM Michael Kelley <mikelley@microsoft.com> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > The Hyper-V frame buffer driver may be built as a module, and
> > > > it needs access to screen_info. So export screen_info.
> > > >
> > > > Signed-off-by: Michael Kelley <mikelley@microsoft.com>
> > >
> > > Is there any chance of using a more modern KMS based driver for the screen
> > > than the old fbdev subsystem? I had hoped to one day completely remove
> > > support for the old CONFIG_VIDEO_FBDEV and screen_info from modern
> > > architectures.
> > >
> >
> > The current hyperv_fb.c driver is all we have today for the synthetic Hyper-V
> > frame buffer device.  That driver builds and runs on both ARM64 and x86.
> >
> > I'm not knowledgeable about video/graphics drivers, but when you
> > say "a more modern KMS based driver", are you meaning one based on
> > DRM & KMS?  Does DRM make sense for a "dumb" frame buffer device?
> > Are there any drivers that would be a good pattern to look at?
> 
> It used to be a lot harder to write a DRM driver compared to an fbdev
> driver, but this has changed to the opposite over the years.
> 
> A fairly minimal example would be drivers/gpu/drm/pl111/pl111_drv.c
> or anything in drivers/gpu/drm/tiny/, but you may want to look at the
> other hypervisor platforms first, i.e drivers/gpu/drm/virtio/virtgpu_drv.c,
> drivers/gpu/drm/vmwgfx/vmwgfx_drv.c, drivers/gpu/drm/xen/xen_drm_front.c,
> drivers/gpu/drm/qxl/qxl_drv.c, and drivers/gpu/drm/bochs/bochs_drv.c.
> 

Thanks for the pointers, especially for the other hypervisors.

Michael