ACPI DSDT

[Eric W. Biederman]

Stefan Reinauer <stepan at openbios.org> writes:

> Hi,
> 
> one thing that is generically missing in LinuxBIOS' ACPI implementation
> is the detailed system description table (DSDT The part telling whether 
> there is a lid and how detect whether it is open or closed)
> 
> The DSDT is written in ASL which is compiled to AML bytecode using an
> ASL compiler (ie. Intel's iasl) Thus, a LinuxBIOS port implementing a
> DSDT needs either to come with a precompiled DSDT or it needs an
> installed ASL compiler. What is the preferred default behaviour? 

Code we can correct and maintain so an ASL compiler.

> Do we
> want to add ASL source code or rather have something that keeps the
> build requirements for those boards as small as possible. 

We can put the code in the tree if necessary.

> Or we can pack both the ASL and AML version of the DSDT and have the 
> build process use the precompiled code only. This on the other hand
> requires developers to take care that they check in a new binary version
> when they change something to the ASL code. CVS is not doing too well
> with binary stuff.. 

Not having the source is really not GPL compatible.  We need the
preferred form for making modifications.

We certainly need to provide this information, as all motherboard
specific information is the province of the motherboard firmware.
However I'm not at all convinced that the ACPI tables are the right
approach.

At any rate we need to really solve some of the more mundane issues
like irq routing properly before we go to far with this.

Eric