[9fans] graphics

[ron minnich <rminnich@gmail.com>]

This just hit phoronix:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTE1NDc

I'm extracting a driver from linux for use in coreboot, using the
semantic patch tool. The goal is to let coreboot draw a splash screen
in the first 200 milliseconds or so after power on. I've got a lot of
bits working, as I explained in my question to the list. Graphics
drivers are, I am finding, a very hard thing to extract, esp. the
intel drivers, as the GPUs are very complex, and the hardware more so:
every link needs to be trained. This is not vga ... it gets messy.

This is not the same as a shim to let you run source. It's rewriting
source with semantic patches, and it's much more powerful.

It has occurred to me more than once that one could use this same
technique to programatically create native hardware
drivers for plan 9 and avoid vesa.

You might even be able to get coccinnelle running on plan 9 with
cinap's excellent linuxemu tool so you can do the patch.

ron