xref: /linux/Documentation/gpu/todo.rst (revision 5e66e818e0358fe42704404580b70e1ffc7afb6a)
1.. _todo:
2
3=========
4TODO list
5=========
6
7This section contains a list of smaller janitorial tasks in the kernel DRM
8graphics subsystem useful as newbie projects. Or for slow rainy days.
9
10Difficulty
11----------
12
13To make it easier task are categorized into different levels:
14
15Starter: Good tasks to get started with the DRM subsystem.
16
17Intermediate: Tasks which need some experience with working in the DRM
18subsystem, or some specific GPU/display graphics knowledge. For debugging issue
19it's good to have the relevant hardware (or a virtual driver set up) available
20for testing.
21
22Advanced: Tricky tasks that need fairly good understanding of the DRM subsystem
23and graphics topics. Generally need the relevant hardware for development and
24testing.
25
26Expert: Only attempt these if you've successfully completed some tricky
27refactorings already and are an expert in the specific area
28
29Subsystem-wide refactorings
30===========================
31
32Remove custom dumb_map_offset implementations
33---------------------------------------------
34
35All GEM based drivers should be using drm_gem_create_mmap_offset() instead.
36Audit each individual driver, make sure it'll work with the generic
37implementation (there's lots of outdated locking leftovers in various
38implementations), and then remove it.
39
40Contact: Daniel Vetter, respective driver maintainers
41
42Level: Intermediate
43
44Convert existing KMS drivers to atomic modesetting
45--------------------------------------------------
46
473.19 has the atomic modeset interfaces and helpers, so drivers can now be
48converted over. Modern compositors like Wayland or Surfaceflinger on Android
49really want an atomic modeset interface, so this is all about the bright
50future.
51
52There is a conversion guide for atomic and all you need is a GPU for a
53non-converted driver (again virtual HW drivers for KVM are still all
54suitable).
55
56As part of this drivers also need to convert to universal plane (which means
57exposing primary & cursor as proper plane objects). But that's much easier to
58do by directly using the new atomic helper driver callbacks.
59
60Contact: Daniel Vetter, respective driver maintainers
61
62Level: Advanced
63
64Clean up the clipped coordination confusion around planes
65---------------------------------------------------------
66
67We have a helper to get this right with drm_plane_helper_check_update(), but
68it's not consistently used. This should be fixed, preferrably in the atomic
69helpers (and drivers then moved over to clipped coordinates). Probably the
70helper should also be moved from drm_plane_helper.c to the atomic helpers, to
71avoid confusion - the other helpers in that file are all deprecated legacy
72helpers.
73
74Contact: Ville Syrjälä, Daniel Vetter, driver maintainers
75
76Level: Advanced
77
78Improve plane atomic_check helpers
79----------------------------------
80
81Aside from the clipped coordinates right above there's a few suboptimal things
82with the current helpers:
83
84- drm_plane_helper_funcs->atomic_check gets called for enabled or disabled
85  planes. At best this seems to confuse drivers, worst it means they blow up
86  when the plane is disabled without the CRTC. The only special handling is
87  resetting values in the plane state structures, which instead should be moved
88  into the drm_plane_funcs->atomic_duplicate_state functions.
89
90- Once that's done, helpers could stop calling ->atomic_check for disabled
91  planes.
92
93- Then we could go through all the drivers and remove the more-or-less confused
94  checks for plane_state->fb and plane_state->crtc.
95
96Contact: Daniel Vetter
97
98Level: Advanced
99
100Convert early atomic drivers to async commit helpers
101----------------------------------------------------
102
103For the first year the atomic modeset helpers didn't support asynchronous /
104nonblocking commits, and every driver had to hand-roll them. This is fixed
105now, but there's still a pile of existing drivers that easily could be
106converted over to the new infrastructure.
107
108One issue with the helpers is that they require that drivers handle completion
109events for atomic commits correctly. But fixing these bugs is good anyway.
110
111Somewhat related is the legacy_cursor_update hack, which should be replaced with
112the new atomic_async_check/commit functionality in the helpers in drivers that
113still look at that flag.
114
115Contact: Daniel Vetter, respective driver maintainers
116
117Level: Advanced
118
119Fallout from atomic KMS
120-----------------------
121
122``drm_atomic_helper.c`` provides a batch of functions which implement legacy
123IOCTLs on top of the new atomic driver interface. Which is really nice for
124gradual conversion of drivers, but unfortunately the semantic mismatches are
125a bit too severe. So there's some follow-up work to adjust the function
126interfaces to fix these issues:
127
128* atomic needs the lock acquire context. At the moment that's passed around
129  implicitly with some horrible hacks, and it's also allocate with
130  ``GFP_NOFAIL`` behind the scenes. All legacy paths need to start allocating
131  the acquire context explicitly on stack and then also pass it down into
132  drivers explicitly so that the legacy-on-atomic functions can use them.
133
134  Except for some driver code this is done. This task should be finished by
135  adding WARN_ON(!drm_drv_uses_atomic_modeset) in drm_modeset_lock_all().
136
137* A bunch of the vtable hooks are now in the wrong place: DRM has a split
138  between core vfunc tables (named ``drm_foo_funcs``), which are used to
139  implement the userspace ABI. And then there's the optional hooks for the
140  helper libraries (name ``drm_foo_helper_funcs``), which are purely for
141  internal use. Some of these hooks should be move from ``_funcs`` to
142  ``_helper_funcs`` since they are not part of the core ABI. There's a
143  ``FIXME`` comment in the kerneldoc for each such case in ``drm_crtc.h``.
144
145Contact: Daniel Vetter
146
147Level: Intermediate
148
149Get rid of dev->struct_mutex from GEM drivers
150---------------------------------------------
151
152``dev->struct_mutex`` is the Big DRM Lock from legacy days and infested
153everything. Nowadays in modern drivers the only bit where it's mandatory is
154serializing GEM buffer object destruction. Which unfortunately means drivers
155have to keep track of that lock and either call ``unreference`` or
156``unreference_locked`` depending upon context.
157
158Core GEM doesn't have a need for ``struct_mutex`` any more since kernel 4.8,
159and there's a GEM object ``free`` callback for any drivers which are
160entirely ``struct_mutex`` free.
161
162For drivers that need ``struct_mutex`` it should be replaced with a driver-
163private lock. The tricky part is the BO free functions, since those can't
164reliably take that lock any more. Instead state needs to be protected with
165suitable subordinate locks or some cleanup work pushed to a worker thread. For
166performance-critical drivers it might also be better to go with a more
167fine-grained per-buffer object and per-context lockings scheme. Currently only
168the ``msm`` and `i915` drivers use ``struct_mutex``.
169
170Contact: Daniel Vetter, respective driver maintainers
171
172Level: Advanced
173
174Move Buffer Object Locking to dma_resv_lock()
175---------------------------------------------
176
177Many drivers have their own per-object locking scheme, usually using
178mutex_lock(). This causes all kinds of trouble for buffer sharing, since
179depending which driver is the exporter and importer, the locking hierarchy is
180reversed.
181
182To solve this we need one standard per-object locking mechanism, which is
183dma_resv_lock(). This lock needs to be called as the outermost lock, with all
184other driver specific per-object locks removed. The problem is tha rolling out
185the actual change to the locking contract is a flag day, due to struct dma_buf
186buffer sharing.
187
188Level: Expert
189
190Convert logging to drm_* functions with drm_device paramater
191------------------------------------------------------------
192
193For drivers which could have multiple instances, it is necessary to
194differentiate between which is which in the logs. Since DRM_INFO/WARN/ERROR
195don't do this, drivers used dev_info/warn/err to make this differentiation. We
196now have drm_* variants of the drm print functions, so we can start to convert
197those drivers back to using drm-formatted specific log messages.
198
199Before you start this conversion please contact the relevant maintainers to make
200sure your work will be merged - not everyone agrees that the DRM dmesg macros
201are better.
202
203Contact: Sean Paul, Maintainer of the driver you plan to convert
204
205Level: Starter
206
207Convert drivers to use simple modeset suspend/resume
208----------------------------------------------------
209
210Most drivers (except i915 and nouveau) that use
211drm_atomic_helper_suspend/resume() can probably be converted to use
212drm_mode_config_helper_suspend/resume(). Also there's still open-coded version
213of the atomic suspend/resume code in older atomic modeset drivers.
214
215Contact: Maintainer of the driver you plan to convert
216
217Level: Intermediate
218
219Convert drivers to use drm_fbdev_generic_setup()
220------------------------------------------------
221
222Most drivers can use drm_fbdev_generic_setup(). Driver have to implement
223atomic modesetting and GEM vmap support. Historically, generic fbdev emulation
224expected the framebuffer in system memory or system-like memory. By employing
225struct dma_buf_map, drivers with frambuffers in I/O memory can be supported
226as well.
227
228Contact: Maintainer of the driver you plan to convert
229
230Level: Intermediate
231
232Reimplement functions in drm_fbdev_fb_ops without fbdev
233-------------------------------------------------------
234
235A number of callback functions in drm_fbdev_fb_ops could benefit from
236being rewritten without dependencies on the fbdev module. Some of the
237helpers could further benefit from using struct dma_buf_map instead of
238raw pointers.
239
240Contact: Thomas Zimmermann <tzimmermann@suse.de>, Daniel Vetter
241
242Level: Advanced
243
244
245drm_framebuffer_funcs and drm_mode_config_funcs.fb_create cleanup
246-----------------------------------------------------------------
247
248A lot more drivers could be switched over to the drm_gem_framebuffer helpers.
249Various hold-ups:
250
251- Need to switch over to the generic dirty tracking code using
252  drm_atomic_helper_dirtyfb first (e.g. qxl).
253
254- Need to switch to drm_fbdev_generic_setup(), otherwise a lot of the custom fb
255  setup code can't be deleted.
256
257- Many drivers wrap drm_gem_fb_create() only to check for valid formats. For
258  atomic drivers we could check for valid formats by calling
259  drm_plane_check_pixel_format() against all planes, and pass if any plane
260  supports the format. For non-atomic that's not possible since like the format
261  list for the primary plane is fake and we'd therefor reject valid formats.
262
263- Many drivers subclass drm_framebuffer, we'd need a embedding compatible
264  version of the varios drm_gem_fb_create functions. Maybe called
265  drm_gem_fb_create/_with_dirty/_with_funcs as needed.
266
267Contact: Daniel Vetter
268
269Level: Intermediate
270
271Generic fbdev defio support
272---------------------------
273
274The defio support code in the fbdev core has some very specific requirements,
275which means drivers need to have a special framebuffer for fbdev. The main
276issue is that it uses some fields in struct page itself, which breaks shmem
277gem objects (and other things). To support defio, affected drivers require
278the use of a shadow buffer, which may add CPU and memory overhead.
279
280Possible solution would be to write our own defio mmap code in the drm fbdev
281emulation. It would need to fully wrap the existing mmap ops, forwarding
282everything after it has done the write-protect/mkwrite trickery:
283
284- In the drm_fbdev_fb_mmap helper, if we need defio, change the
285  default page prots to write-protected with something like this::
286
287      vma->vm_page_prot = pgprot_wrprotect(vma->vm_page_prot);
288
289- Set the mkwrite and fsync callbacks with similar implementions to the core
290  fbdev defio stuff. These should all work on plain ptes, they don't actually
291  require a struct page.  uff. These should all work on plain ptes, they don't
292  actually require a struct page.
293
294- Track the dirty pages in a separate structure (bitfield with one bit per page
295  should work) to avoid clobbering struct page.
296
297Might be good to also have some igt testcases for this.
298
299Contact: Daniel Vetter, Noralf Tronnes
300
301Level: Advanced
302
303Garbage collect fbdev scrolling acceleration
304--------------------------------------------
305
306Scroll acceleration has been disabled in fbcon. Now it works as the old
307SCROLL_REDRAW mode. A ton of code was removed in fbcon.c and the hook bmove was
308removed from fbcon_ops.
309Remaining tasks:
310
311- a bunch of the hooks in fbcon_ops could be removed or simplified by calling
312  directly instead of the function table (with a switch on p->rotate)
313
314- fb_copyarea is unused after this, and can be deleted from all drivers
315
316- after that, fb_copyarea can be deleted from fb_ops in include/linux/fb.h as
317  well as cfb_copyarea
318
319Note that not all acceleration code can be deleted, since clearing and cursor
320support is still accelerated, which might be good candidates for further
321deletion projects.
322
323Contact: Daniel Vetter
324
325Level: Intermediate
326
327idr_init_base()
328---------------
329
330DRM core&drivers uses a lot of idr (integer lookup directories) for mapping
331userspace IDs to internal objects, and in most places ID=0 means NULL and hence
332is never used. Switching to idr_init_base() for these would make the idr more
333efficient.
334
335Contact: Daniel Vetter
336
337Level: Starter
338
339struct drm_gem_object_funcs
340---------------------------
341
342GEM objects can now have a function table instead of having the callbacks on the
343DRM driver struct. This is now the preferred way. Callbacks in drivers have been
344converted, except for struct drm_driver.gem_prime_mmap.
345
346Level: Intermediate
347
348Rename CMA helpers to DMA helpers
349---------------------------------
350
351CMA (standing for contiguous memory allocator) is really a bit an accident of
352what these were used for first, a much better name would be DMA helpers. In the
353text these should even be called coherent DMA memory helpers (so maybe CDM, but
354no one knows what that means) since underneath they just use dma_alloc_coherent.
355
356Contact: Laurent Pinchart, Daniel Vetter
357
358Level: Intermediate (mostly because it is a huge tasks without good partial
359milestones, not technically itself that challenging)
360
361connector register/unregister fixes
362-----------------------------------
363
364- For most connectors it's a no-op to call drm_connector_register/unregister
365  directly from driver code, drm_dev_register/unregister take care of this
366  already. We can remove all of them.
367
368- For dp drivers it's a bit more a mess, since we need the connector to be
369  registered when calling drm_dp_aux_register. Fix this by instead calling
370  drm_dp_aux_init, and moving the actual registering into a late_register
371  callback as recommended in the kerneldoc.
372
373Level: Intermediate
374
375Remove load/unload callbacks from all non-DRIVER_LEGACY drivers
376---------------------------------------------------------------
377
378The load/unload callbacks in struct &drm_driver are very much midlayers, plus
379for historical reasons they get the ordering wrong (and we can't fix that)
380between setting up the &drm_driver structure and calling drm_dev_register().
381
382- Rework drivers to no longer use the load/unload callbacks, directly coding the
383  load/unload sequence into the driver's probe function.
384
385- Once all non-DRIVER_LEGACY drivers are converted, disallow the load/unload
386  callbacks for all modern drivers.
387
388Contact: Daniel Vetter
389
390Level: Intermediate
391
392Replace drm_detect_hdmi_monitor() with drm_display_info.is_hdmi
393---------------------------------------------------------------
394
395Once EDID is parsed, the monitor HDMI support information is available through
396drm_display_info.is_hdmi. Many drivers still call drm_detect_hdmi_monitor() to
397retrieve the same information, which is less efficient.
398
399Audit each individual driver calling drm_detect_hdmi_monitor() and switch to
400drm_display_info.is_hdmi if applicable.
401
402Contact: Laurent Pinchart, respective driver maintainers
403
404Level: Intermediate
405
406Consolidate custom driver modeset properties
407--------------------------------------------
408
409Before atomic modeset took place, many drivers where creating their own
410properties. Among other things, atomic brought the requirement that custom,
411driver specific properties should not be used.
412
413For this task, we aim to introduce core helpers or reuse the existing ones
414if available:
415
416A quick, unconfirmed, examples list.
417
418Introduce core helpers:
419- audio (amdgpu, intel, gma500, radeon)
420- brightness, contrast, etc (armada, nouveau) - overlay only (?)
421- broadcast rgb (gma500, intel)
422- colorkey (armada, nouveau, rcar) - overlay only (?)
423- dither (amdgpu, nouveau, radeon) - varies across drivers
424- underscan family (amdgpu, radeon, nouveau)
425
426Already in core:
427- colorspace (sti)
428- tv format names, enhancements (gma500, intel)
429- tv overscan, margins, etc. (gma500, intel)
430- zorder (omapdrm) - same as zpos (?)
431
432
433Contact: Emil Velikov, respective driver maintainers
434
435Level: Intermediate
436
437Use struct dma_buf_map throughout codebase
438------------------------------------------
439
440Pointers to shared device memory are stored in struct dma_buf_map. Each
441instance knows whether it refers to system or I/O memory. Most of the DRM-wide
442interface have been converted to use struct dma_buf_map, but implementations
443often still use raw pointers.
444
445The task is to use struct dma_buf_map where it makes sense.
446
447* Memory managers should use struct dma_buf_map for dma-buf-imported buffers.
448* TTM might benefit from using struct dma_buf_map internally.
449* Framebuffer copying and blitting helpers should operate on struct dma_buf_map.
450
451Contact: Thomas Zimmermann <tzimmermann@suse.de>, Christian König, Daniel Vetter
452
453Level: Intermediate
454
455Review all drivers for setting struct drm_mode_config.{max_width,max_height} correctly
456--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
457
458The values in struct drm_mode_config.{max_width,max_height} describe the
459maximum supported framebuffer size. It's the virtual screen size, but many
460drivers treat it like limitations of the physical resolution.
461
462The maximum width depends on the hardware's maximum scanline pitch. The
463maximum height depends on the amount of addressable video memory. Review all
464drivers to initialize the fields to the correct values.
465
466Contact: Thomas Zimmermann <tzimmermann@suse.de>
467
468Level: Intermediate
469
470Request memory regions in all drivers
471-------------------------------------
472
473Go through all drivers and add code to request the memory regions that the
474driver uses. This requires adding calls to request_mem_region(),
475pci_request_region() or similar functions. Use helpers for managed cleanup
476where possible.
477
478Drivers are pretty bad at doing this and there used to be conflicts among
479DRM and fbdev drivers. Still, it's the correct thing to do.
480
481Contact: Thomas Zimmermann <tzimmermann@suse.de>
482
483Level: Starter
484
485
486Core refactorings
487=================
488
489Make panic handling work
490------------------------
491
492This is a really varied tasks with lots of little bits and pieces:
493
494* The panic path can't be tested currently, leading to constant breaking. The
495  main issue here is that panics can be triggered from hardirq contexts and
496  hence all panic related callback can run in hardirq context. It would be
497  awesome if we could test at least the fbdev helper code and driver code by
498  e.g. trigger calls through drm debugfs files. hardirq context could be
499  achieved by using an IPI to the local processor.
500
501* There's a massive confusion of different panic handlers. DRM fbdev emulation
502  helpers have one, but on top of that the fbcon code itself also has one. We
503  need to make sure that they stop fighting over each another.
504
505* ``drm_can_sleep()`` is a mess. It hides real bugs in normal operations and
506  isn't a full solution for panic paths. We need to make sure that it only
507  returns true if there's a panic going on for real, and fix up all the
508  fallout.
509
510* The panic handler must never sleep, which also means it can't ever
511  ``mutex_lock()``. Also it can't grab any other lock unconditionally, not
512  even spinlocks (because NMI and hardirq can panic too). We need to either
513  make sure to not call such paths, or trylock everything. Really tricky.
514
515* For the above locking troubles reasons it's pretty much impossible to
516  attempt a synchronous modeset from panic handlers. The only thing we could
517  try to achive is an atomic ``set_base`` of the primary plane, and hope that
518  it shows up. Everything else probably needs to be delayed to some worker or
519  something else which happens later on. Otherwise it just kills the box
520  harder, prevent the panic from going out on e.g. netconsole.
521
522* There's also proposal for a simplied DRM console instead of the full-blown
523  fbcon and DRM fbdev emulation. Any kind of panic handling tricks should
524  obviously work for both console, in case we ever get kmslog merged.
525
526Contact: Daniel Vetter
527
528Level: Advanced
529
530Clean up the debugfs support
531----------------------------
532
533There's a bunch of issues with it:
534
535- The drm_info_list ->show() function doesn't even bother to cast to the drm
536  structure for you. This is lazy.
537
538- We probably want to have some support for debugfs files on crtc/connectors and
539  maybe other kms objects directly in core. There's even drm_print support in
540  the funcs for these objects to dump kms state, so it's all there. And then the
541  ->show() functions should obviously give you a pointer to the right object.
542
543- The drm_info_list stuff is centered on drm_minor instead of drm_device. For
544  anything we want to print drm_device (or maybe drm_file) is the right thing.
545
546- The drm_driver->debugfs_init hooks we have is just an artifact of the old
547  midlayered load sequence. DRM debugfs should work more like sysfs, where you
548  can create properties/files for an object anytime you want, and the core
549  takes care of publishing/unpuplishing all the files at register/unregister
550  time. Drivers shouldn't need to worry about these technicalities, and fixing
551  this (together with the drm_minor->drm_device move) would allow us to remove
552  debugfs_init.
553
554Previous RFC that hasn't landed yet: https://lore.kernel.org/dri-devel/20200513114130.28641-2-wambui.karugax@gmail.com/
555
556Contact: Daniel Vetter
557
558Level: Intermediate
559
560Object lifetime fixes
561---------------------
562
563There's two related issues here
564
565- Cleanup up the various ->destroy callbacks, which often are all the same
566  simple code.
567
568- Lots of drivers erroneously allocate DRM modeset objects using devm_kzalloc,
569  which results in use-after free issues on driver unload. This can be serious
570  trouble even for drivers for hardware integrated on the SoC due to
571  EPROBE_DEFERRED backoff.
572
573Both these problems can be solved by switching over to drmm_kzalloc(), and the
574various convenience wrappers provided, e.g. drmm_crtc_alloc_with_planes(),
575drmm_universal_plane_alloc(), ... and so on.
576
577Contact: Daniel Vetter
578
579Level: Intermediate
580
581Remove automatic page mapping from dma-buf importing
582----------------------------------------------------
583
584When importing dma-bufs, the dma-buf and PRIME frameworks automatically map
585imported pages into the importer's DMA area. drm_gem_prime_fd_to_handle() and
586drm_gem_prime_handle_to_fd() require that importers call dma_buf_attach()
587even if they never do actual device DMA, but only CPU access through
588dma_buf_vmap(). This is a problem for USB devices, which do not support DMA
589operations.
590
591To fix the issue, automatic page mappings should be removed from the
592buffer-sharing code. Fixing this is a bit more involved, since the import/export
593cache is also tied to &drm_gem_object.import_attach. Meanwhile we paper over
594this problem for USB devices by fishing out the USB host controller device, as
595long as that supports DMA. Otherwise importing can still needlessly fail.
596
597Contact: Thomas Zimmermann <tzimmermann@suse.de>, Daniel Vetter
598
599Level: Advanced
600
601
602Better Testing
603==============
604
605Enable trinity for DRM
606----------------------
607
608And fix up the fallout. Should be really interesting ...
609
610Level: Advanced
611
612Make KMS tests in i-g-t generic
613-------------------------------
614
615The i915 driver team maintains an extensive testsuite for the i915 DRM driver,
616including tons of testcases for corner-cases in the modesetting API. It would
617be awesome if those tests (at least the ones not relying on Intel-specific GEM
618features) could be made to run on any KMS driver.
619
620Basic work to run i-g-t tests on non-i915 is done, what's now missing is mass-
621converting things over. For modeset tests we also first need a bit of
622infrastructure to use dumb buffers for untiled buffers, to be able to run all
623the non-i915 specific modeset tests.
624
625Level: Advanced
626
627Extend virtual test driver (VKMS)
628---------------------------------
629
630See the documentation of :ref:`VKMS <vkms>` for more details. This is an ideal
631internship task, since it only requires a virtual machine and can be sized to
632fit the available time.
633
634Level: See details
635
636Backlight Refactoring
637---------------------
638
639Backlight drivers have a triple enable/disable state, which is a bit overkill.
640Plan to fix this:
641
6421. Roll out backlight_enable() and backlight_disable() helpers everywhere. This
643   has started already.
6442. In all, only look at one of the three status bits set by the above helpers.
6453. Remove the other two status bits.
646
647Contact: Daniel Vetter
648
649Level: Intermediate
650
651Driver Specific
652===============
653
654AMD DC Display Driver
655---------------------
656
657AMD DC is the display driver for AMD devices starting with Vega. There has been
658a bunch of progress cleaning it up but there's still plenty of work to be done.
659
660See drivers/gpu/drm/amd/display/TODO for tasks.
661
662Contact: Harry Wentland, Alex Deucher
663
664vmwgfx: Replace hashtable with Linux' implementation
665----------------------------------------------------
666
667The vmwgfx driver uses its own hashtable implementation. Replace the
668code with Linux' implementation and update the callers. It's mostly a
669refactoring task, but the interfaces are different.
670
671Contact: Zack Rusin, Thomas Zimmermann <tzimmermann@suse.de>
672
673Level: Intermediate
674
675Bootsplash
676==========
677
678There is support in place now for writing internal DRM clients making it
679possible to pick up the bootsplash work that was rejected because it was written
680for fbdev.
681
682- [v6,8/8] drm/client: Hack: Add bootsplash example
683  https://patchwork.freedesktop.org/patch/306579/
684
685- [RFC PATCH v2 00/13] Kernel based bootsplash
686  https://lore.kernel.org/r/20171213194755.3409-1-mstaudt@suse.de
687
688Contact: Sam Ravnborg
689
690Level: Advanced
691
692Outside DRM
693===========
694
695Convert fbdev drivers to DRM
696----------------------------
697
698There are plenty of fbdev drivers for older hardware. Some hardware has
699become obsolete, but some still provides good(-enough) framebuffers. The
700drivers that are still useful should be converted to DRM and afterwards
701removed from fbdev.
702
703Very simple fbdev drivers can best be converted by starting with a new
704DRM driver. Simple KMS helpers and SHMEM should be able to handle any
705existing hardware. The new driver's call-back functions are filled from
706existing fbdev code.
707
708More complex fbdev drivers can be refactored step-by-step into a DRM
709driver with the help of the DRM fbconv helpers. [1] These helpers provide
710the transition layer between the DRM core infrastructure and the fbdev
711driver interface. Create a new DRM driver on top of the fbconv helpers,
712copy over the fbdev driver, and hook it up to the DRM code. Examples for
713several fbdev drivers are available at [1] and a tutorial of this process
714available at [2]. The result is a primitive DRM driver that can run X11
715and Weston.
716
717 - [1] https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/tzimmermann/linux/tree/fbconv
718 - [2] https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/tzimmermann/linux/blob/fbconv/drivers/gpu/drm/drm_fbconv_helper.c
719
720Contact: Thomas Zimmermann <tzimmermann@suse.de>
721
722Level: Advanced
723