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authorHenrique de Moraes Holschuh <hmh@hmh.eng.br>2007-04-24 11:48:12 -0300
committerLen Brown <len.brown@intel.com>2007-04-25 02:00:27 -0400
commit54ae15014c306b3d7ad32c996fea9a5ac8560b60 (patch)
treebe9760b8447cf37a33395a8a9be688ccc4ed2171 /Documentation
parent99fba3f8177956170f3d86f83c2cf2f70747105f (diff)
ACPI: thinkpad-acpi: register with the device model
Register thinkpad-acpi platform driver and platform device for the device model. Also register the platform device with the hwmon class. Signed-off-by: Henrique de Moraes Holschuh <hmh@hmh.eng.br> Signed-off-by: Len Brown <len.brown@intel.com>
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation')
-rw-r--r--Documentation/thinkpad-acpi.txt40
1 files changed, 34 insertions, 6 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/thinkpad-acpi.txt b/Documentation/thinkpad-acpi.txt
index 1a42b77e2ec..0e4e053cfac 100644
--- a/Documentation/thinkpad-acpi.txt
+++ b/Documentation/thinkpad-acpi.txt
@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
ThinkPad ACPI Extras Driver
Version 0.14
- March 26th, 2007
+ April 21st, 2007
Borislav Deianov <borislav@users.sf.net>
Henrique de Moraes Holschuh <hmh@hmh.eng.br>
@@ -67,11 +67,39 @@ thinkpad-specific bay functionality.
Features
--------
-The driver creates the /proc/acpi/ibm directory. There is a file under
-that directory for each feature described below. Note that while the
-driver is still in the alpha stage, the exact proc file format and
-commands supported by the various features is guaranteed to change
-frequently.
+The driver exports two different interfaces to userspace, which can be
+used to access the features it provides. One is a legacy procfs-based
+interface, which will be removed at some time in the distant future.
+The other is a new sysfs-based interface which is not complete yet.
+
+The procfs interface creates the /proc/acpi/ibm directory. There is a
+file under that directory for each feature it supports. The procfs
+interface is mostly frozen, and will change very little if at all: it
+will not be extended to add any new functionality in the driver, instead
+all new functionality will be implemented on the sysfs interface.
+
+The sysfs interface tries to blend in the generic Linux sysfs subsystems
+and classes as much as possible. Since some of these subsystems are not
+yet ready or stabilized, it is expected that this interface will change,
+and any and all userspace programs must deal with it.
+
+
+Notes about the sysfs interface:
+
+Unlike what was done with the procfs interface, correctness when talking
+to the sysfs interfaces will be enforced, as will correctness in the
+thinkpad-acpi's implementation of sysfs interfaces.
+
+Also, any bugs in the thinkpad-acpi sysfs driver code or in the
+thinkpad-acpi's implementation of the sysfs interfaces will be fixed for
+maximum correctness, even if that means changing an interface in
+non-compatible ways. As these interfaces mature both in the kernel and
+in thinkpad-acpi, such changes should become quite rare.
+
+Applications interfacing to the thinkpad-acpi sysfs interfaces must
+follow all sysfs guidelines and correctly process all errors (the sysfs
+interface makes extensive use of errors). File descriptors and open /
+close operations to the sysfs inodes must also be properly implemented.
Driver version -- /proc/acpi/ibm/driver
---------------------------------------