Video4Linux sup­port in FreeBSD

Yes­ter­day I com­mit­ted the v4l sup­port into the lin­ux­u­la­tor (in 9‑current). Part of this was the import of the v4l head­er from lin­ux. We have the per­mis­sion to use it, it is not licensed via GPL. This means we can use it in FreeB­SD native dri­vers, and they are even allowed to be com­piled into GENERIC (but I doubt we have a dri­ver which could pro­vide the v4l inter­face in GENERIC).

The code I com­mit­ted is “just” the glue-code which allows to use FreeB­SD native devices which pro­vide a v4l inter­face (e.g. multimedia/pwcbsd) from lin­ux programs.

If some­one is will­ing to write the glue-code for the v4l2 inter­face please con­tact me. We have the per­mis­sion to use the v4l2 head­er too, we just need some­one doing the coding.

In a sim­i­lar way, if some­one is will­ing to add v4l2 inter­face sup­port to FreeB­SD native dri­vers (I do not know any FreeB­SD dri­ver which pro­vides a v4l2 inter­face) , just tell me and I import the v4l2 head­er into FreeBSD.

And if some­one wants to add v4l sup­port to FreeB­SD native dri­vers but does not know where to start, feel free to con­tact me too.

Regard­ing the code which is in FreeB­SD ATM: it is not com­plete­ly fin­ished yet (some clip­ping relat­ed stuff is being worked on), but the not fin­ished part can not even be test­ed, as we do not know about a FreeB­SD device which pro­vides this functionality.

There is no MFC planned yet, but the more suc­cess sto­ries and test sce­nar­ios are being told about on the emu­la­tion or mul­ti­me­dia mail­inglists, the more like­ly I will do a MFC soon­er than later.