Re: Framebuffer console support for i386 and amd64

[Andrew Doran <ad%netbsd.org@localhost>]

Hi,

Thanks for doing this!

On Sat, Feb 14, 2009 at 03:58:22PM -0500, Jared D. McNeill wrote:

> My goal is to nuke vesafb, and replace it with genfb in the i386 and 
> amd64 kernels. This is a prereq to having proper splash screen support. 
> I would like to check in the following changes to the x86 bootloader and 
> kernel. Any objections?
> 
>   http://www.invisible.ca/~jmcneill/outgoing/x86fb/

- rasops_cmap[] has a TNF copyright.

- Can you add 3 or 4 spare uint32_t's to btinfo_framebuffer? Just in case
  there is an issue with adding to the structure later. Probably won't be an
  issue, but..

- command_vesa should go into vbe.c since the other loaders will want it.

Some observations:

- The growing collection of stubs is silly, it would be nice to copy the DOS
  int86() call at some point in the future. Just an observation, I don't
  object to adding the VESA stubs.

- x86_genfb_set_mapreg - probably safe to assume that it will work
  everywhere but I'd like to get some test coverage with different hardware.
  I think this means setting fb console by default during the 6.0 cycle (in
  boot.cfg). We could also look at ditching the vga driver and using the
  simpler pcdisplay for fallback, and look at how it is going to interact
  with drm. No point having pcdisplay+vga+genfb in the kernel.

- We don't allow fb console to be hardwired into the loader binary with
  installboot. But since it's really just an extension to the PC console
  type, I don't think it matters.

Otherwise it looks OK to me.

Thanks,
Andrew