Subject: FPGA manager user space interface

From: [email-masked] (Florian Fainelli)
Date: Sun, 10 Jul 2016 14:28:58 -0700

Hi all,

I just wrote a FPGA manager driver for the TS-7300 board which features
an Altera Cyclone II on board. While the finished solution is my case
might be something like the MFD driver for the FPGA devices requesting
the bitstream load and registering the different devices it exposes,
during development it is nice to exercise the FPGA manager driver to
load something:

- a quick way is to add a pair of sysfs attributes to define the
bitstream filename and to trigger the load

- offer a more consistent and robust interface through e.g; a character
device that you can write/read/poll to see the loading progress about

- have the driver exposing FPGA peripherals be exposing an user space
interface to trigger a (re)load/(re)/configuration, although that's
really something that belongs in the FPGA manager it seems

I am mostly curious if these were taken into account during the initial
design and it is agreed upon that yes these are some of options and that
userspace loading is just anecdotal we do not need any userspace
interface, or if this is just missing and we want one? Either way, I
don't mind submitting what I came up with for the TS-7300 board.

Thanks!
--
Florian