Re: [PATCH v2 12/12] media: uvcvideo: Do not create MC entities for virtual entities

[Ricardo Ribalda]

Hi Laurent and Hans


On Sun, 29 Jun 2025 at 20:06, Laurent Pinchart
<laurent.pinchart@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Hi Ricardo,
>
> Thank you for the patch.
>
> I would use "software entities" and not "virtual entities" in the
> subject line and everywhere else, as those entities are not virtual.
>
> On Thu, Jun 05, 2025 at 05:53:05PM +0000, Ricardo Ribalda wrote:
> > Neither the GPIO nor the SWENTITY entities form part of the device
> > pipeline. We just create them to hold emulated uvc controls.
> >
> > When the device initializes, a warning is thrown by the v4l2 core:
> > uvcvideo 1-1:1.0: Entity type for entity SWENTITY was not initialized!
> >
> > There are no entity function that matches what we are doing here, and
> > it does not make to much sense to create a function for entities that
> > do not really exist.
>
> I don't agree with this. The purpose of reporting entities to userspace
> through the MC API is to let application enumerate what entities a
> device contains. Being able to enumerate software entities seems as
> useful as being able to enumerate hardware entities.

What function shall we use in this case? Nothing here seems to match a
software entity
https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/userspace-api/media/mediactl/media-types.html

Any suggestion for name?
Shall we just live with the warning in dmesg?

>
> > Do not create MC entities for them and pretend nothing happened here.
> >
> > Signed-off-by: Ricardo Ribalda <ribalda@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > ---
> >  drivers/media/usb/uvc/uvc_entity.c | 10 ++++++++++
> >  1 file changed, 10 insertions(+)
> >
> > diff --git a/drivers/media/usb/uvc/uvc_entity.c b/drivers/media/usb/uvc/uvc_entity.c
> > index d1a652ef35ec34801bd39a5124b834edf838a79e..2dbeb4ab0c4c8cc763ff2dcd2d836a50f3c6a040 100644
> > --- a/drivers/media/usb/uvc/uvc_entity.c
> > +++ b/drivers/media/usb/uvc/uvc_entity.c
> > @@ -72,6 +72,16 @@ static int uvc_mc_init_entity(struct uvc_video_chain *chain,
> >  {
> >       int ret;
> >
> > +     /*
> > +      * Do not initialize virtual entities, they do not really exist
> > +      * and are not connected to any other entities.
> > +      */
> > +     switch (UVC_ENTITY_TYPE(entity)) {
> > +     case UVC_EXT_GPIO_UNIT:
> > +     case UVC_SWENTITY_UNIT:
> > +             return 0;
> > +     }
> > +
> >       if (UVC_ENTITY_TYPE(entity) != UVC_TT_STREAMING) {
> >               u32 function;
> >
>
> --
> Regards,
>
> Laurent Pinchart



-- 
Ricardo Ribalda