| 1 | These are the steps you should follow to write a new driver and |
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| 2 | submit it to us so that it will be applied cleanly to our package. |
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| 3 | |
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| 4 | * Contact us first. |
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| 5 | You are of course free to write your own drivers, but it is smart to |
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| 6 | check first nobody else is already working on it. |
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| 7 | Check our "New Drivers" page for information also. |
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| 8 | |
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| 9 | * Write the new driver. |
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| 10 | For a chip driver, use lm78.c as template. For an SMBus-only adapter, |
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| 11 | use i2c-piix4.c. Use i2c-via.c for an I2C-level adapter. |
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| 12 | Usually, we make all prefixes start with the driver name. This is not |
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| 13 | really necessary, as these symbols will not be exported anyway. But by |
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| 14 | doing this, you are sure you do not shadow any global kernel names. |
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| 15 | Remember that you want to output the direct measurements done by the |
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| 16 | chip. If these sensor values need scaling, this should be done through |
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| 17 | the configuration file. |
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| 18 | |
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| 19 | * Meet Kernel coding standards |
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| 20 | See Documentation/CodingStyle in the kernel source. |
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| 21 | Be sure and use 8 column tabs. |
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| 22 | |
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| 23 | * Add the driver to the Makefile. |
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| 24 | Usually, you can just add it to KERNEL{CHIPS,DRIVERS}TARGETS in the |
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| 25 | Module.mk file in the directory itself. |
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| 26 | |
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| 27 | * Make sure it compiles cleanly. |
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| 28 | If you compile with 'make WARN=1', you usually get many additional |
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| 29 | warnings. Please resolve these too, even if you know they are |
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| 30 | harmless. Do the same with 'make DEBUG=1 WARN=1' if you use debugging |
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| 31 | information. Remember, things put between #ifdef DEBUG #endif may never |
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| 32 | stop the driver from functioning; they should just output additional |
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| 33 | information. |
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| 34 | |
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| 35 | * Check for external symbols |
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| 36 | 'nm --extern --defined' should only output symbols starting with __module, |
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| 37 | cleanup_module, init_module and some kernel versioning symbols. Mark all |
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| 38 | other symbols as static in your source file. |
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| 39 | |
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| 40 | * Test the module |
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| 41 | This is usually the boring part... |
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| 42 | Test both with 2.2.x and 2.4.x kernels. |
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| 43 | |
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| 44 | * Add detection information to prog/detect/sensors-detect |
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| 45 | This is a perl script that automatically detects what chips and adapters |
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| 46 | are present. Contact Frodo if you need help. |
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| 47 | |
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| 48 | * Add chip information to lib/chips.{c,h} for chip drivers |
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| 49 | Until you have done this, the chip will be invisible for user-level |
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| 50 | programs. Again, contact Frodo if you need help with this. |
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| 51 | |
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| 52 | * Add entries to etc/sensors.conf.eg |
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| 53 | If needed, you can set defaults here. |
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| 54 | |
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| 55 | * Add a dedicated procedure to prog/sensors/chips.[ch] |
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| 56 | This makes the included sensors program pretty-print your chip information. |
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| 57 | |
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| 58 | * Add the name of the device to the README file. |
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| 59 | |
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| 60 | * Add your name to the CONTRIBUTORS file. |
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| 61 | |
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| 62 | * Add entries to the CHANGES file. |
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| 63 | |
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| 64 | * Write a doc/chips/xxx or doc/busses/xxx file. |
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| 65 | |
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| 66 | * Make sure the GPL boilerplate and your name (and if applicable your |
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| 67 | company's name) is at the top of the |
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| 68 | new driver so we know you are giving it to us under the GPL. |
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| 69 | |
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| 70 | * Submit the changes to us a patch against CVS. |
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