[Ce-android-mainline] timed gpio and timed output drivers

[Shuah Khan]

On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 4:43 PM, NeilBrown <neilb at suse.de> wrote:
> On Mon, 27 Feb 2012 13:51:07 -0800 Colin Cross <ccross at android.com> wrote:
>
>> On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 7:26 AM, Shuah Khan <shuahkhan at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > I saw a timed_gpio patch come through on lkml. Looks like this driver
>> > is being used and patched.  Could somebody from Andorid team comment
>> > on the need for a special driver instead of using leds.
>>
>> It has been used in the past for vibrator control.  The main feature
>> it provides vs. leds is one shot timed enables, which prevents a
>> userspace crash from leaving the vibrator on, which would kill the
>> battery very quickly.  Plus, putting the vibrator in /sys/class/leds
>> is counterintuitive.
>
> Adding a one-shot trigger to 'leds' would probably be welcome and would make
> leds completely usable.
>
> The 'counter-intuitive' aspect is unfortunate.  With hind-sight, 'leds'
> probably wasn't the best name.  It might be possible to create a more generic
> name while using the same code???