Re: Future of the SAA7146 drivers

[Hans Verkuil <hverkuil-cisco@xs4all.nl>]

Hi Sören,

On 01/02/2023 12:35, Soeren Moch wrote:

<snip>

>>>> Obviously, if someone wants to do the vb2 conversion, then that would be
>>>> perfect. I was looking at removing analog video support, and that doesn't
>>>> look as easy as I thought it would be.
>>>>
> I only own full-featured (Nexus) cards, modified to also support a mode
> of operation like budget cards. In full-featured cards there is a
> possibility to re-read the decoded video output signal back, which could
> be similar to how analog cards work. But I never had access to
> analog/hybrid saa7146 cards, so I'm not sure I can test this mode. I
> also don't know anybody with such card who could help testing.
> I personally do not care much about analog card support in the driver,
> but will at least check which part of analog functionality is used in
> full-featured cards. Maybe the support for analog/hybrid cards and some
> test coverage comes for free with full support for full-featured cards.

It's the analog video streaming that uses vb2, so being able to test that
is critical.

So I decided to do this differently:

1) I'll revert the move of saa7146 to staging, it will go back to
   mainline. av7110 stays in staging for now (that might change, I
   just don't want to make more changes than strictly necessary).

2) I will do the vb2 conversion. I have the analog video hardware,
   so I can test this.

I didn't want to spend time on that originally, but since these drivers
are still in use, it is probably best if I bite the bullet and just do it.

I'm now almost done with the vb2 conversion of cx18, and it was about
2 days work, which isn't that bad. I'll try to get this saa7146 vb2
conversion done this month.

The PR reverting this has just been posted:

https://patchwork.linuxtv.org/project/linux-media/patch/5902a4f2-da31-816c-f3cf-020340dbaddf@xs4all.nl/

Regards,

	Hans