Presenting The Common Display Framework

Laurent Pinchart has submitted patches seeking comments concerning the Common Display Framework, formerly being developed as the Generic Panel Framework.

Pinchart -- the developer who earlier this year called for deprecating the Linux frame-buffer -- has been working on Renesas Mobile SoC display controller support when coming to realize that the Linux kernel already has several driver-based panel support solutions. In talking with other driver developers, he conceived the Generic Panel Framework for display devices. He didn't want to use the kernel's LCD framework because it's tied to FBDEV and he wants this framework to be agnostic towards any subsystem whether it be DRM, FBDEV, or other areas.

The Generic Panel Framework code was originally published under a "Request For Comments" flag in August but not much was heard about it since. On Thursday, the patches -- still under an RFC flag -- were published in a revised form while now being called the Common Display Framework.

From Laurent's new patch series, "After discussing the Generic Panel Framework at Linaro Connect we came to the conclusion that "panel" is too limiting a name. In addition to panel drivers we also want to share transmitter and bridge drivers between DRM and FBDEV. I have thus introduced the concept of a display entity in this version to represent any hardware block that sources, processes or sinks display-related video streams. This patch set implements the Common Display Framework (CDF)."

For those interested in more low-level details on the Common Display Framework, see this lengthy mailing list message that introduces the set of five patches making up this new Linux kernel framework.