Re: [patch 0/2] add actuators support

From: Greg KH
Date: Mon Jul 17 2017 - 12:40:16 EST


On Mon, Jul 17, 2017 at 06:34:58PM +0200, Jiri Pirko wrote:
> Mon, Jul 17, 2017 at 06:28:38PM CEST, gregkh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> >On Mon, Jul 17, 2017 at 06:19:12PM +0200, Jiri Pirko wrote:
> >> From: Jiri Pirko <jiri@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> >>
> >> I am owner of height adjustable desk and naturally, as it has an USB
> >> interface, I need to controll it from my computer. Started to think
> >> about what would be the best way, I realized that I need to introduce
> >> a new driver class in kernel. The reason is a need to have one API
> >> for all possible kinds of actuator devices (USB, I2C, gpio, etc).
> >
> >Why does this have to be a kernel driver at all? Your USB driver should
> >really just be a simple userspace application (use libusb to have it
> >work on all operating systems.)
>
> Yeah, I was thinking about it as well. To have some kind of single
> purpose app like sispmctl (control of surge protector). But that would
> limit you only for this specific device. And for multiple devices you
> would have to have multiple apps.
>
> So it seems to me like a suitable solution to have this as a driver
> class.

For USB devices, especially ones as simple as this, we don't want them
to have kernel drivers. It's just overkill.

And never create a class if you only have one type of device, otherwise
you don't know if you really have it properly defined or not. 3 is a
good number to start with.

sorry,

greg k-h