On 16. 10. 23 14:32, Geoffrey D. Bennett wrote:
On Mon, Oct 16, 2023 at 09:04:21AM +0200, Jaroslav Kysela wrote:
On 14. 10. 23 15:58, Geoffrey D. Bennett wrote:
In order to support functions such as firmware upgrade from user-space, add ioctls for submitting arbitrary proprietary requests through scarlett2_usb() and requesting/releasing exclusive access.
Hi Takashi,
I recently figured how to update the firmware on Scarlett Gen 2+ devices. I think the best way to implement this is with an ioctl giving access to the scarlett2_usb() function from user-space, plus two ioctls to request/release exclusive access.
Does something like this seem reasonable?
Maybe you can use libusb for this job without an additional kernel interface. It allows to detach the USB kernel driver and attach it again when the job is complete.
Hi Jaroslav,
I considered using libusb (I used it during initial development of the driver), and if the only purpose of the ioctl would be for firmware updates then it would be reasonable to detach the kernel driver for that. However...
Beyond just being able to do firmware operations, that ioctl would also allow access to all of the configuration space using cmd = SCARLETT2_USB_GET_DATA and SCARLETT2_USB_SET_DATA. I think this would be the cleanest way to allow implementing non-mixer related functionality in user-space, such as reading the current firmware version, reading/updating the device name and channel names, and updating the software configuration space for Focusrite Control compatibility to name a few. These sorts of applications need to be able to make these proprietary requests through the scarlett2 driver to avoid disrupting it (or disrupting audio).
Thank you for this bigger picture. But except the firmware upgrade, all those functions seem to be implementable in a more abstract way using standard control API. Note that we can assign the controls also to card (e.g. SNDRV_CTL_ELEM_IFACE_CARD) to classify them as non-mixer.
Jaroslav