[pvrusb2] New driver snapshot: pvrusb2-mci-20070119

[Mike Isely]

On Fri, 19 Jan 2007, roger wrote:

> 
> 
> On Fri, 2007-01-19 at 22:45 -0600, Mike Isely wrote:
> > This snapshot enables FM _stereo_ radio reception.  It also includes 
> > (thanks to Pantelis) some hackery in the V4L ioctl implementation that 
> > allows "mplayer pvr://" to work.
> 
> Probably will be a popular question: When will this patch be posted
> upstream into the kernel?  Next vanilla-2.6.18.x release?
> 

I don't have a lot of control over that.  The current kernel merge 
process means that the recent spate of changes can't show up until 
2.6.21.  This is not really a "bad" thing; it's a big part of the reason 
why kernel stability has remained fairly decent.  The rules for kernel 
inclusion are basically this:

1. Fixes for bugs can be accepted at any time, and can be included where 
it makes sense (e.g. a 2.6.19.x point-release).  However these must be 
strictly limited to fixes - no new features.

2. New features are accepted only during the kernel merge window, which 
is a 2 week interval that opens shortly after each kernel release.  
Anything missing the window has to wait until the next window, which of 
course isn't until the next kernel release.

The merge window for 2.6.20 opened and closed quite a while ago.  The 
next chance will be for 2.6.21, which won't start until 2.6.20 is 
officially released (which may be soon).  The pvrusb2 driver has been 
pretty stable and quiescent until December when all the FM radio support 
work got underway.  Nearly everything that's changed since then has been 
in support of that new feature, so you're really not going to see any of 
this in the kernel until 2.6.21 at the earliest.

The hacks for allowing "mplayer pvr://" could be viewed as a bug fix.  
However there are also some other more pervasive changes which I suspect 
would also be needed (thinking about all the VIDIOC_G_TUNER fixes).  
Even _I_ wouldn't want to see that stuff put into an older kernel.  So 
it may be best just to be patient.

If you're not patient, well there's always the snapshots, or just build 
the official v4l-dvb repository (which usually only lags the snapshot 
releases on a scale of days rather than weeks or months).

  -Mike


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