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+Overview of the V4L2 driver framework
+=====================================
+
+This text documents the various structures provided by the V4L2 framework and
+their relationships.
+
+
+Introduction
+------------
+
+The V4L2 drivers tend to be very complex due to the complexity of the
+hardware: most devices have multiple ICs, export multiple device nodes in
+/dev, and create also non-V4L2 devices such as DVB, ALSA, FB, I2C and input
+(IR) devices.
+
+Especially the fact that V4L2 drivers have to setup supporting ICs to
+do audio/video muxing/encoding/decoding makes it more complex than most.
+Usually these ICs are connected to the main bridge driver through one or
+more I2C busses, but other busses can also be used. Such devices are
+called 'sub-devices'.
+
+For a long time the framework was limited to the video_device struct for
+creating V4L device nodes and video_buf for handling the video buffers
+(note that this document does not discuss the video_buf framework).
+
+This meant that all drivers had to do the setup of device instances and
+connecting to sub-devices themselves. Some of this is quite complicated
+to do right and many drivers never did do it correctly.
+
+There is also a lot of common code that could never be refactored due to
+the lack of a framework.
+
+So this framework sets up the basic building blocks that all drivers
+need and this same framework should make it much easier to refactor
+common code into utility functions shared by all drivers.
+
+
+Structure of a driver
+---------------------
+
+All drivers have the following structure:
+
+1) A struct for each device instance containing the device state.
+
+2) A way of initializing and commanding sub-devices (if any).
+
+3) Creating V4L2 device nodes (/dev/videoX, /dev/vbiX, /dev/radioX and
+   /dev/vtxX) and keeping track of device-node specific data.
+
+4) Filehandle-specific structs containing per-filehandle data.
+
+This is a rough schematic of how it all relates:
+
+    device instances
+      |
+      +-sub-device instances
+      |
+      \-V4L2 device nodes
+          |
+          \-filehandle instances
+
+
+Structure of the framework
+--------------------------
+
+The framework closely resembles the driver structure: it has a v4l2_device
+struct for the device instance data, a v4l2_subdev struct to refer to
+sub-device instances, the video_device struct stores V4L2 device node data
+and in the future a v4l2_fh struct will keep track of filehandle instances
+(this is not yet implemented).
+
+
+struct v4l2_device
+------------------
+
+Each device instance is represented by a struct v4l2_device (v4l2-device.h).
+Very simple devices can just allocate this struct, but most of the time you
+would embed this struct inside a larger struct.
+
+You must register the device instance:
+
+        v4l2_device_register(struct device *dev, struct v4l2_device *v4l2_dev);
+
+Registration will initialize the v4l2_device struct and link dev->driver_data
+to v4l2_dev. Registration will also set v4l2_dev->name to a value derived from
+dev (driver name followed by the bus_id, to be precise). You may change the
+name after registration if you want.
+
+The first 'dev' argument is normally the struct device pointer of a pci_dev,
+usb_device or platform_device.
+
+You unregister with:
+
+        v4l2_device_unregister(struct v4l2_device *v4l2_dev);
+
+Unregistering will also automatically unregister all subdevs from the device.
+
+Sometimes you need to iterate over all devices registered by a specific
+driver. This is usually the case if multiple device drivers use the same
+hardware. E.g. the ivtvfb driver is a framebuffer driver that uses the ivtv
+hardware. The same is true for alsa drivers for example.
+
+You can iterate over all registered devices as follows:
+
+static int callback(struct device *dev, void *p)
+{
+        struct v4l2_device *v4l2_dev = dev_get_drvdata(dev);
+
+        /* test if this device was inited */
+        if (v4l2_dev == NULL)
+                return 0;
+        ...
+        return 0;
+}
+
+int iterate(void *p)
+{
+        struct device_driver *drv;
+        int err;
+
+        /* Find driver 'ivtv' on the PCI bus.
+           pci_bus_type is a global. For USB busses use usb_bus_type. */
+        drv = driver_find("ivtv", &pci_bus_type);
+        /* iterate over all ivtv device instances */
+        err = driver_for_each_device(drv, NULL, p, callback);
+        put_driver(drv);
+        return err;
+}
+
+Sometimes you need to keep a running counter of the device instance. This is
+commonly used to map a device instance to an index of a module option array.
+
+The recommended approach is as follows:
+
+static atomic_t drv_instance = ATOMIC_INIT(0);
+
+static int __devinit drv_probe(struct pci_dev *dev,
+                                const struct pci_device_id *pci_id)
+{
+        ...
+        state->instance = atomic_inc_return(&drv_instance) - 1;
+}
+
+
+struct v4l2_subdev
+------------------
+
+Many drivers need to communicate with sub-devices. These devices can do all
+sort of tasks, but most commonly they handle audio and/or video muxing,
+encoding or decoding. For webcams common sub-devices are sensors and camera
+controllers.
+
+Usually these are I2C devices, but not necessarily. In order to provide the
+driver with a consistent interface to these sub-devices the v4l2_subdev struct
+(v4l2-subdev.h) was created.
+
+Each sub-device driver must have a v4l2_subdev struct. This struct can be
+stand-alone for simple sub-devices or it might be embedded in a larger struct
+if more state information needs to be stored. Usually there is a low-level
+device struct (e.g. i2c_client) that contains the device data as setup
+by the kernel. It is recommended to store that pointer in the private
+data of v4l2_subdev using v4l2_set_subdevdata(). That makes it easy to go
+from a v4l2_subdev to the actual low-level bus-specific device data.
+
+You also need a way to go from the low-level struct to v4l2_subdev. For the
+common i2c_client struct the i2c_set_clientdata() call is used to store a
+v4l2_subdev pointer, for other busses you may have to use other methods.
+
+From the bridge driver perspective you load the sub-device module and somehow
+obtain the v4l2_subdev pointer. For i2c devices this is easy: you call
+i2c_get_clientdata(). For other busses something similar needs to be done.
+Helper functions exists for sub-devices on an I2C bus that do most of this
+tricky work for you.
+
+Each v4l2_subdev contains function pointers that sub-device drivers can
+implement (or leave NULL if it is not applicable). Since sub-devices can do
+so many different things and you do not want to end up with a huge ops struct
+of which only a handful of ops are commonly implemented, the function pointers
+are sorted according to category and each category has its own ops struct.
+
+The top-level ops struct contains pointers to the category ops structs, which
+may be NULL if the subdev driver does not support anything from that category.
+
+It looks like this:
+
+struct v4l2_subdev_core_ops {
+        int (*g_chip_ident)(struct v4l2_subdev *sd, struct v4l2_dbg_chip_ident *chip);
+        int (*log_status)(struct v4l2_subdev *sd);
+        int (*init)(struct v4l2_subdev *sd, u32 val);
+        ...
+};
+
+struct v4l2_subdev_tuner_ops {
+        ...
+};
+
+struct v4l2_subdev_audio_ops {
+        ...
+};
+
+struct v4l2_subdev_video_ops {
+        ...
+};
+
+struct v4l2_subdev_ops {
+        const struct v4l2_subdev_core_ops  *core;
+        const struct v4l2_subdev_tuner_ops *tuner;
+        const struct v4l2_subdev_audio_ops *audio;
+        const struct v4l2_subdev_video_ops *video;
+};
+
+The core ops are common to all subdevs, the other categories are implemented
+depending on the sub-device. E.g. a video device is unlikely to support the
+audio ops and vice versa.
+
+This setup limits the number of function pointers while still making it easy
+to add new ops and categories.
+
+A sub-device driver initializes the v4l2_subdev struct using:
+
+        v4l2_subdev_init(subdev, &ops);
+
+Afterwards you need to initialize subdev->name with a unique name and set the
+module owner. This is done for you if you use the i2c helper functions.
+
+A device (bridge) driver needs to register the v4l2_subdev with the
+v4l2_device:
+
+        int err = v4l2_device_register_subdev(device, subdev);
+
+This can fail if the subdev module disappeared before it could be registered.
+After this function was called successfully the subdev->dev field points to
+the v4l2_device.
+
+You can unregister a sub-device using:
+
+        v4l2_device_unregister_subdev(subdev);
+
+Afterwards the subdev module can be unloaded and subdev->dev == NULL.
+
+You can call an ops function either directly:
+
+        err = subdev->ops->core->g_chip_ident(subdev, &chip);
+
+but it is better and easier to use this macro:
+
+        err = v4l2_subdev_call(subdev, core, g_chip_ident, &chip);
+
+The macro will to the right NULL pointer checks and returns -ENODEV if subdev
+is NULL, -ENOIOCTLCMD if either subdev->core or subdev->core->g_chip_ident is
+NULL, or the actual result of the subdev->ops->core->g_chip_ident ops.
+
+It is also possible to call all or a subset of the sub-devices:
+
+        v4l2_device_call_all(dev, 0, core, g_chip_ident, &chip);
+
+Any subdev that does not support this ops is skipped and error results are
+ignored. If you want to check for errors use this:
+
+        err = v4l2_device_call_until_err(dev, 0, core, g_chip_ident, &chip);
+
+Any error except -ENOIOCTLCMD will exit the loop with that error. If no
+errors (except -ENOIOCTLCMD) occured, then 0 is returned.
+
+The second argument to both calls is a group ID. If 0, then all subdevs are
+called. If non-zero, then only those whose group ID match that value will
+be called. Before a bridge driver registers a subdev it can set subdev->grp_id
+to whatever value it wants (it's 0 by default). This value is owned by the
+bridge driver and the sub-device driver will never modify or use it.
+
+The group ID gives the bridge driver more control how callbacks are called.
+For example, there may be multiple audio chips on a board, each capable of
+changing the volume. But usually only one will actually be used when the
+user want to change the volume. You can set the group ID for that subdev to
+e.g. AUDIO_CONTROLLER and specify that as the group ID value when calling
+v4l2_device_call_all(). That ensures that it will only go to the subdev
+that needs it.
+
+The advantage of using v4l2_subdev is that it is a generic struct and does
+not contain any knowledge about the underlying hardware. So a driver might
+contain several subdevs that use an I2C bus, but also a subdev that is
+controlled through GPIO pins. This distinction is only relevant when setting
+up the device, but once the subdev is registered it is completely transparent.
+
+
+I2C sub-device drivers
+----------------------
+
+Since these drivers are so common, special helper functions are available to
+ease the use of these drivers (v4l2-common.h).
+
+The recommended method of adding v4l2_subdev support to an I2C driver is to
+embed the v4l2_subdev struct into the state struct that is created for each
+I2C device instance. Very simple devices have no state struct and in that case
+you can just create a v4l2_subdev directly.
+
+A typical state struct would look like this (where 'chipname' is replaced by
+the name of the chip):
+
+struct chipname_state {
+        struct v4l2_subdev sd;
+        ...  /* additional state fields */
+};
+
+Initialize the v4l2_subdev struct as follows:
+
+        v4l2_i2c_subdev_init(&state->sd, client, subdev_ops);
+
+This function will fill in all the fields of v4l2_subdev and ensure that the
+v4l2_subdev and i2c_client both point to one another.
+
+You should also add a helper inline function to go from a v4l2_subdev pointer
+to a chipname_state struct:
+
+static inline struct chipname_state *to_state(struct v4l2_subdev *sd)
+{
+        return container_of(sd, struct chipname_state, sd);
+}
+
+Use this to go from the v4l2_subdev struct to the i2c_client struct:
+
+        struct i2c_client *client = v4l2_get_subdevdata(sd);
+
+And this to go from an i2c_client to a v4l2_subdev struct:
+
+        struct v4l2_subdev *sd = i2c_get_clientdata(client);
+
+Finally you need to make a command function to make driver->command()
+call the right subdev_ops functions:
+
+static int subdev_command(struct i2c_client *client, unsigned cmd, void *arg)
+{
+        return v4l2_subdev_command(i2c_get_clientdata(client), cmd, arg);
+}
+
+If driver->command is never used then you can leave this out. Eventually the
+driver->command usage should be removed from v4l.
+
+Make sure to call v4l2_device_unregister_subdev(sd) when the remove() callback
+is called. This will unregister the sub-device from the bridge driver. It is
+safe to call this even if the sub-device was never registered.
+
+
+The bridge driver also has some helper functions it can use:
+
+struct v4l2_subdev *sd = v4l2_i2c_new_subdev(adapter, "module_foo", "chipid", 0x36);
+
+This loads the given module (can be NULL if no module needs to be loaded) and
+calls i2c_new_device() with the given i2c_adapter and chip/address arguments.
+If all goes well, then it registers the subdev with the v4l2_device. It gets
+the v4l2_device by calling i2c_get_adapdata(adapter), so you should make sure
+that adapdata is set to v4l2_device when you setup the i2c_adapter in your
+driver.
+
+You can also use v4l2_i2c_new_probed_subdev() which is very similar to
+v4l2_i2c_new_subdev(), except that it has an array of possible I2C addresses
+that it should probe. Internally it calls i2c_new_probed_device().
+
+Both functions return NULL if something went wrong.
+
+
+struct video_device
+-------------------
+
+The actual device nodes in the /dev directory are created using the
+video_device struct (v4l2-dev.h). This struct can either be allocated
+dynamically or embedded in a larger struct.
+
+To allocate it dynamically use:
+
+        struct video_device *vdev = video_device_alloc();
+
+        if (vdev == NULL)
+                return -ENOMEM;
+
+        vdev->release = video_device_release;
+
+If you embed it in a larger struct, then you must set the release()
+callback to your own function:
+
+        struct video_device *vdev = &my_vdev->vdev;
+
+        vdev->release = my_vdev_release;
+
+The release callback must be set and it is called when the last user
+of the video device exits.
+
+The default video_device_release() callback just calls kfree to free the
+allocated memory.
+
+You should also set these fields:
+
+- v4l2_dev: set to the v4l2_device parent device.
+- name: set to something descriptive and unique.
+- fops: set to the v4l2_file_operations struct.
+- ioctl_ops: if you use the v4l2_ioctl_ops to simplify ioctl maintenance
+  (highly recommended to use this and it might become compulsory in the
+  future!), then set this to your v4l2_ioctl_ops struct.
+
+If you use v4l2_ioctl_ops, then you should set either .unlocked_ioctl or
+.ioctl to video_ioctl2 in your v4l2_file_operations struct.
+
+The v4l2_file_operations struct is a subset of file_operations. The main
+difference is that the inode argument is omitted since it is never used.
+
+
+video_device registration
+-------------------------
+
+Next you register the video device: this will create the character device
+for you.
+
+        err = video_register_device(vdev, VFL_TYPE_GRABBER, -1);
+        if (err) {
+                video_device_release(vdev); /* or kfree(my_vdev); */
+                return err;
+        }
+
+Which device is registered depends on the type argument. The following
+types exist:
+
+VFL_TYPE_GRABBER: videoX for video input/output devices
+VFL_TYPE_VBI: vbiX for vertical blank data (i.e. closed captions, teletext)
+VFL_TYPE_RADIO: radioX for radio tuners
+VFL_TYPE_VTX: vtxX for teletext devices (deprecated, don't use)
+
+The last argument gives you a certain amount of control over the device
+kernel number used (i.e. the X in videoX). Normally you will pass -1 to
+let the v4l2 framework pick the first free number. But if a driver creates
+many devices, then it can be useful to have different video devices in
+separate ranges. For example, video capture devices start at 0, video
+output devices start at 16.
+
+So you can use the last argument to specify a minimum kernel number and
+the v4l2 framework will try to pick the first free number that is equal
+or higher to what you passed. If that fails, then it will just pick the
+first free number.
+
+Whenever a device node is created some attributes are also created for you.
+If you look in /sys/class/video4linux you see the devices. Go into e.g.
+video0 and you will see 'name' and 'index' attributes. The 'name' attribute
+is the 'name' field of the video_device struct. The 'index' attribute is
+a device node index that can be assigned by the driver, or that is calculated
+for you.
+
+If you call video_register_device(), then the index is just increased by
+1 for each device node you register. The first video device node you register
+always starts off with 0.
+
+Alternatively you can call video_register_device_index() which is identical
+to video_register_device(), but with an extra index argument. Here you can
+pass a specific index value (between 0 and 31) that should be used.
+
+Users can setup udev rules that utilize the index attribute to make fancy
+device names (e.g. 'mpegX' for MPEG video capture device nodes).
+
+After the device was successfully registered, then you can use these fields:
+
+- vfl_type: the device type passed to video_register_device.
+- minor: the assigned device minor number.
+- num: the device kernel number (i.e. the X in videoX).
+- index: the device index number (calculated or set explicitly using
+  video_register_device_index).
+
+If the registration failed, then you need to call video_device_release()
+to free the allocated video_device struct, or free your own struct if the
+video_device was embedded in it. The vdev->release() callback will never
+be called if the registration failed, nor should you ever attempt to
+unregister the device if the registration failed.
+
+
+video_device cleanup
+--------------------
+
+When the video device nodes have to be removed, either during the unload
+of the driver or because the USB device was disconnected, then you should
+unregister them:
+
+        video_unregister_device(vdev);
+
+This will remove the device nodes from sysfs (causing udev to remove them
+from /dev).
+
+After video_unregister_device() returns no new opens can be done.
+
+However, in the case of USB devices some application might still have one
+of these device nodes open. You should block all new accesses to read,
+write, poll, etc. except possibly for certain ioctl operations like
+queueing buffers.
+
+When the last user of the video device node exits, then the vdev->release()
+callback is called and you can do the final cleanup there.
+
+
+video_device helper functions
+-----------------------------
+
+There are a few useful helper functions:
+
+You can set/get driver private data in the video_device struct using:
+
+void *video_get_drvdata(struct video_device *dev);
+void video_set_drvdata(struct video_device *dev, void *data);
+
+Note that you can safely call video_set_drvdata() before calling
+video_register_device().
+
+And this function:
+
+struct video_device *video_devdata(struct file *file);
+
+returns the video_device belonging to the file struct.
+
+The final helper function combines video_get_drvdata with
+video_devdata:
+
+void *video_drvdata(struct file *file);
+
+You can go from a video_device struct to the v4l2_device struct using:
+
+struct v4l2_device *v4l2_dev = vdev->v4l2_dev;