A Multi-Year Effort Has Started To Better Document Intel's DRM/KMS Driver

One of the most frequent reasons we here when it comes developers not getting involved with the open-source Linux graphics driver development (or even just driver bug-fixing) comes down to the high barrier to entry due to a lack of comprehensive documentation, etc. As one step towards improving the driver documentation situation, Daniel Vetter has begun a long process of documenting the Intel (i915) DRM/KMS kernel driver.

The Swiss programmer wrote to the DRM kernel developers' list this week, "So I've decided that it's really time to (slowly) crawl through i915 and document everything. It's going to take years, but here's a start at least. I realize that this has good chances to create a constant stream of little conflicts all over. Well, so be it, I really think we need this."

In the process of writing the kernel documentation for the code, Daniel is cleaning up the driver's interfaces, putting the functions into a new file that is better organized, and then writing kernel documentation on the code -- including a short overview of the file.

Daniel's initial set of patches can be found via this mailing list thread though it covers just a small fraction of the driver's code-base with the full cleansing and documentation process expected to take years over many kernel cycles, given Daniel's workload with other Intel Linux driver tasks via the company's Open-Source Technology Center.