From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Stelian Pop Subject: Re: sony-laptop vs sonypi (Re: [PATCH 1/2] Add new sony laptop drivers maintainer) Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2007 22:59:43 +0100 Message-ID: <1171144783.5026.14.camel@localhost.localdomain> References: <11709622011964-git-send-email-malattia@linux.it> <1171028098.6387.15.camel@localhost.localdomain> <56393.85.47.20.193.1171029689.squirrel@picard.linux.it> <200702091158.18909.lenb@kernel.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-15 Content-Transfer-Encoding: QUOTED-PRINTABLE Return-path: Received: from sd291.sivit.org ([194.146.225.122]:4234 "EHLO sd291.sivit.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751963AbXBJV7v (ORCPT ); Sat, 10 Feb 2007 16:59:51 -0500 In-Reply-To: <200702091158.18909.lenb@kernel.org> Sender: linux-acpi-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: linux-acpi@vger.kernel.org To: Len Brown Cc: Mattia Dongili , linux-acpi@vger.kernel.org Le vendredi 09 f=E9vrier 2007 =E0 11:58 -0500, Len Brown a =E9crit : > sonypi is an interesting beast, and I do mean beast. > It pre-dates Linux ACPI support by several years > and is chock-full of reverse engineered magic numbers. Yep. It was Andrew Trigdell (with friends) who reverse engineered some of those magic numbers in the first place, and even I never knew what were they good for. [...] > I think one of the major decisions you need to make going forward > is if it makes sense to maintain the parts of sonypi > that are reverse engineered AML -- rather than simply > running in ACPI mode and invoking the AML in the BIOS. Personaly I think that running without ACPI today is no longer an option, especially on laptops. So I would indeed go in this direction. [...] > Personally, I think that invoking machine specific AML > has its risks, but invoking C-ized machine specific AML > sucked into a platform specific driver borders on the insane. > (but Linux didn't have ACPI in 2000, so maybe "determined" > would be a more appropriate word:-) I'll take that as a compliment then :) > Stelian, > I think if you can list what you know actually works on what models, > and what may not work, and what you think about the code needs to > be changed, that would help Mattia enormously. Unfortunately, this is something I always wanted to do and never get around to. I don't have such a list, I only have a rather big mail folder containing sony related mail. I don't remember if I already said this, but I think it would be a good idea to start a wiki to create some sort of documentation. > I suggest that the goal might be to have a single consolidated > sony-laptop driver. Ie. port the working features one by one > from sonypi into sony-laptop, and when sony-laptop can do everything > that sonypi can do (though maybe not with the same ioctl interface et= c) > the schedule sonypi for deletion. But in the mean time, on the > assumption the people actually use sonypi to make their vaio's > dance in useful ways, I would leave it alone for their benefit. It seems a reasonable way to pursue. Thanks, --=20 Stelian Pop - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-acpi" i= n the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html