Interfacing a user program to a custom driver

[David Wooff]

I am in the process of creating a driver to interface to a custom FPGA
on an in house AT91SAM9G20 board (based on the dev kit).
 
So far, I have created a driver module which at the moment doesn't do an
awful lot other than request the I/O memory region associated with the
chip select we are going to use.  This has been compiled into the kernel
source tree and initialises by simply printing a message to say it has
acquired the I/O memory region.
 
Now I want to write a user program to access the FPGA in order to test
the interface.  My question is: how do I compile this and what does it
actually link against i.e. do I simply add my driver module to the list
of objects in the makefile for my user program?
 
Is there a standard way to do this or could someone provide an example?
 
Also, I guess I am a bit confused as to where the boundary between the
user space and the kernel space actually is.  I mean, if the interface
functions for the driver are in the driver module, then what stops the
application program from simply accessing the FPGA directly?
 
I have read "Linux Device Drivers" but it uses a char driver as the main
example so it doesn't help much in my case.
 
Regards,
Dave W.
 
 
 
David Wooff	  <http://www.calrec.com/images/siglogo.gif> 	
Software Development Engineer
 	
Tel: 	 +44 (0)1422 842159	
Fax: 	 +44 (0)1422 845244	
Email: 	 david.wooff at calrec.com	
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CALREC AUDIO LTD  Nutclough Mill  Hebden Bridge  W Yorks  HX7 8EZ
England	
 


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