[ATrpms-devel] The state of lirc...

[Jarod Wilson]

On Fri, 2008-05-09 at 12:25 -0700, David Rees wrote:
> On Fri, May 9, 2008 at 12:10 PM, Jarod Wilson <jarod at wilsonet.com> wrote:
> > On Fri, 2008-05-09 at 12:00 -0700, David Rees wrote:
> >> Last time I tried using lirc strictly from Fedora, I had problems with
> >> the lirc_serial driver. IIRC, at some point in time it wasn't included
> >> with the kernel. I see that it is now on my Fedora 8 machine, so I'll
> >> try removing the ATrpms versions of lirc and see if the upstream
> >> versions work.
> 
> Just switched over to the RPMs from koji and got everything migrated
> and working. Here's what I had installed before:
> 
> lirc-0.8.3-73_cvs20071109.fc8
> lirc-lib-0.8.3-74_cvs20080314.fc8
> lirc-kmdl-2.6.24.5-85.fc8-0.8.3-74_cvs20080314.fc8
> 
> I removed the kmdl and then tried to upgrade using the new lirc and
> lirc-libs, but lirc complained that it was older than the ATrpms
> version. So then I tried --oldpackage, but then lirc-libs conflicted
> with lirc-lib from ATrpms.
> 
> Finally just removed lirc and lirc-lib with --nodeps then reinstalled
> lirc and lirc-libs.

Yeah, part of my original complaint was that the atrpms packages were
rpm-newer than the fedora 0.8.3 final packages, despite being a ~2mo old
pre-0.8.3 cvs snap. :)


> ATrpms uses /etc/sysconfig/lircd, Fedora uses /etc/sysconfig/lirc so I
> had to transfer my lircd options over.

And similarly, service lircd start vs. service lirc start.

> Unloaded the old lirc modules I had loaded, loaded the ones from the
> kernel and stopped/started lircd. Restarted mythwelcome and
> mythfrontend and everything seems to still work. So from my point of
> view, looks good! :-)

Excellent. I've been using the in-kernel stuff for quite a while myself,
with lirc_i2c, lirc_mceusb and lirc_mceusb2 (I have something like 6
different IR receivers now...)

> > Yep, lirc patches have been in the Fedora kernels since sometime in the
> > 2.6.23 timeframe, including the kernel F8 originally shipped with, iirc.
> 
> I swear I tried using Fedora lirc when I upgraded this machine to F8,
> but I could be wrong... Maybe it was some other issue that kept it
> from working.

Hrm, beats me, I think I've been using them since the day I patched them
into the kernel.

> Is Fedora still shipping lirc patches with recent kernels?

Yes. Although I need to refresh them -- there's a
just-fixed-right-before-0.8.3 segfault or oops with lirc_i2c and 2.6.25
that I need to get taken care of.

> Are you working on getting them upstream into Linus' kernel?

Yes. Although working with upstream is... slow. Its high-latency, but
upstream has already taken a ton of patches I've thrown at them to get
lirc much closer to at least patching checkpatch.pl muster and replace
some deprecated interfaces.

> > I did talk with Ryan Pisani on this topic a bit, sounds like there may
> > be a few drivers in the ATrpms package that aren't in the kernel for
> > whatever reason. Assuming this is the only compelling reason for
> > out-of-tree builds anymore, I'd either suggest the atrpms packages only
> > carry those modules, or we figure out what's required to build them in
> > with the kernel. User-space though, I can't think of any reason for
> > duplication.
> 
> Neither can I. And I also think that keeping as much as possible
> upstream simplifies things for the end users as well.

Axel, anything to add here?


-- 
Jarod Wilson
jarod at wilsonet.com