i2c: Document the implementation details of the /dev interface
I wrote this explanation to answer a question on the i2c mailing list, and thought it would be good to have in the kernel documentation. Signed-off-by: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org>
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@ -167,3 +167,48 @@ The above functions are all inline functions, that resolve to calls to
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the i2c_smbus_access function, that on its turn calls a specific ioctl
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with the data in a specific format. Read the source code if you
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want to know what happens behind the screens.
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Implementation details
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======================
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For the interested, here's the code flow which happens inside the kernel
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when you use the /dev interface to I2C:
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1* Your program opens /dev/i2c-N and calls ioctl() on it, as described in
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section "C example" above.
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2* These open() and ioctl() calls are handled by the i2c-dev kernel
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driver: see i2c-dev.c:i2cdev_open() and i2c-dev.c:i2cdev_ioctl(),
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respectively. You can think of i2c-dev as a generic I2C chip driver
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that can be programmed from user-space.
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3* Some ioctl() calls are for administrative tasks and are handled by
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i2c-dev directly. Examples include I2C_SLAVE (set the address of the
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device you want to access) and I2C_PEC (enable or disable SMBus error
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checking on future transactions.)
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4* Other ioctl() calls are converted to in-kernel function calls by
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i2c-dev. Examples include I2C_FUNCS, which queries the I2C adapter
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functionality using i2c.h:i2c_get_functionality(), and I2C_SMBUS, which
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performs an SMBus transaction using i2c-core.c:i2c_smbus_xfer().
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The i2c-dev driver is responsible for checking all the parameters that
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come from user-space for validity. After this point, there is no
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difference between these calls that came from user-space through i2c-dev
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and calls that would have been performed by kernel I2C chip drivers
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directly. This means that I2C bus drivers don't need to implement
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anything special to support access from user-space.
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5* These i2c-core.c/i2c.h functions are wrappers to the actual
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implementation of your I2C bus driver. Each adapter must declare
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callback functions implementing these standard calls.
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i2c.h:i2c_get_functionality() calls i2c_adapter.algo->functionality(),
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while i2c-core.c:i2c_smbus_xfer() calls either
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adapter.algo->smbus_xfer() if it is implemented, or if not,
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i2c-core.c:i2c_smbus_xfer_emulated() which in turn calls
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i2c_adapter.algo->master_xfer().
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After your I2C bus driver has processed these requests, execution runs
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up the call chain, with almost no processing done, except by i2c-dev to
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package the returned data, if any, in suitable format for the ioctl.
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