[PATCH 0/6] staging: bcm2835-firmware-gpio: Initial staging commit

[Michael Zoran]

On Fri, 2017-03-17 at 17:31 +0100, Stefan Wahren wrote:
> Hi Michael,
> 
> 
> Am 17.03.2017 um 16:22 schrieb Michael Zoran:
> > The firmware now has a mailbox API for performing generalized gpio
> > through
> > the firmware.  This driver builds upon a driver written by Dave
> > Stevenson
> > that was written specifically for the expander on the RPI 3, but I
> > have
> > generalized for generic GPIO through the firmware.
> > 
> > With this change I was able to test VC4 on a RPI 3 running in arm64
> > with
> > a pure mainline tree from the staging branch.
> > 
> > The firmware gpio numbers are currently documented at:
> > https://github.com/raspberrypi/firmware/blob/master/extra/dt-blob.d
> > ts
> > 
> > 
> 
> could you please explain why this driver should go to staging?

I can think of a few reasons:

1. The mailbox API is still very new and a work in progress. I'm sure
it's probably going to change some.

2. It fits in with the VideoCore subsystem idea in that it doesn't talk
directly to hardware. Submitting it to staging would allow us to get
VC4 working sooner to unblock proper testing on a RPI 3.

3. I have some ideas for this driver for future work that I'm still
thinking about but I'm not ready yet to submit any changes.