Hi folks!!!
As some might know I have been working for the last year in my spare
time on the linux console project. Well it ended up as a total rewrite of
the tty/console layer. In the new design the the tty/console layer is
composed of seperate subsystems which can exist independently outside of
the tty layer. Thus the tty layer is constructed from these subsystems.
This makes for a cleaner mor emodular design. Some of things done are:
1) New framebuffer api. This new api allows the fbramebuffer layer to
exist without a framebuffer console. This makes for a much simpler
api and much smaller code. Plus on embedded devices like a iPAQ have
a VT console doesn't make sense. Okay a stowaway does change that.
But it would be nice if the VT system was modular and loadable :-)
This is what we are working at. Pretty much complete.
2) Moving all the keyboards and other input devices over to the input
api. Also makes for a nice modular design. Alot of work done.
3) Rewrite of the serial layer to be more like the parport layer. Here
we have a hardware layer that registers ports and then we bind
device interface drivers to specific ports. It makes no sense to use
a serial tty to talk to a serial joystick for example. Plus their is a
extra cost of going threw needless layers. This is partially complete
but needs alot fo work.
So expect patches. I also look forward to working with people to port
devices over to these new APIs. Thank you.