Userpace serial port

[Ricardo Ribalda Delgado]

Hello Greg

On Thu, Jun 11, 2015 at 5:52 AM, Greg KH <greg at kroah.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 10, 2015 at 02:39:35PM +0200, Ricardo Ribalda Delgado wrote:

>> Nowadays there is a kernel land implementation of ethercat master, but
>> it is not merged (and it is definately not an easy job). And a
>> software implementation http://fh-soft.de/src/ethercat-userspace.html
>
> Why not attempt to merge it?

I have my doubts that this is the best option. If you need real time
performance you need to run it in kernel-space where you need a
ethercat protocol driver, a patch for your network card and an kernel
module for your application.

Without strict real-time requirements, you just need a userspace
library and a userspace application

By looking at our applications, The userspace sollution is more than
enough for our requirements.

The problem appears when we want to use the serial adapter.  I want to
keep using the serial API, but I cannot achieve this from userspace.

>
>> My hope is that there is something like uinput, but for serial
>> devices,i.e. I make a userland program that looks like a normal serial
>> device to the other applications.
>
> A serial device that does what exactly?  What's wrong with the "normal"
> serial userspace api the kernel provides?

I want to use the serial userspace api. But I do not want to write a
kernel module. I really like the design of uinput, and I would like to
use something similar here.

>
> thanks,
>
> greg k-h



-- 
Ricardo Ribalda