[Freeipmi-devel] re-visiting command transaction and locks

[Anand Babu]

Some background:
----------------
GNU FreeIPMI drivers assumes all BMC I/O transactions are in
write-read pairs (write request, read response). At the API level, we
call it a "command" (for example ipmi-lan-cmd, ipmi-kcs-cmd,
ipmi-smic-cmd, ...). Making each command transaction atomic greatly
minimizes driver complexity and sequence tracking issues.

Questions:
---------
1) Anyone using ipmi-kcs/smic/lan-read/write APIs directly instead
of ipmi-kcs/smic/lan-cmd interface? If so, would you consider
switching to -cmd interface?

2) We are currently in the process of providing unified driver
interface for all in-band (LAN) and out-of-band (KCS/SMIC/SSIF)
drivers. Plan is to provide only ipmi-open, ipmi-cmd, ipmi-close
APIs. Even ipmi-locate (probing) is automatic. I am also planning to
move locking to the unified driver layer and make all direct driver
routines private. It is possible to provide ipmi-read and ipmi-write
APIs too. But it adds locking and sequencing complexity which I want
to avoid. 

-- 
Anand Babu
Free as in Freedom <www.gnu.org>