I won't much care about /dev/... vs /sys/... though I'd
probably have used sysfs myself (just because it's much
simpler and doesn't need to imply mdev/udev and classes).
The configuration part of each driver bothers me:
- Mike's simple_gpio requires manual kernel config
to set up the platform_device nodes ... and thus
rules out the first usage scenarios I ever heard
of for such a userspace mechanism.
- Trent's gpio_class exposes all GPIOs, even ones
that are claimed by kernel drivers ... and thus
makes it easy to clobber kernel driver state.
(Plus it won't work on most built-in GPIOs, since
they by and large don't have parent devices.)
What I'd like to see is userspace config commands to
cause the gpio_request() ... *maybe* something like
echo 42 foo 0 > .../gpio_config
... causing error-checked versions of:
gpio_request(42, "foo")
gpio_direction_output(42, 0)
... then some .../gpio42 file, read/write, appears
and
echo 84 bar in > .../gpio_config
... causing error-checked versions of:
gpio_request(84, "bar")
gpio_direction_input(84)
... then some .../gpio84 file, read-only, appears
Though arguably the label could just always be "userspace"
(it's mostly for /sys/kernel/debug/gpio), and the default could
be to configure as an input (unless an output value was given).
Plus, there should be some way to cause gpio_free() too.
A potential advantage of the /dev/... node approach would be
that it's easier to support an IRQ-backed poll() mechanism
for inputs.
- Dave
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