The Atmel ISC driver is not compliant with media controller specification.
In order to evolve this driver, it has to move to media controller, to
support enhanced features and future products which embed it.
The move to media controller involves several changes which are
not backwards compatible with the current usability of the driver.
The best example is the way the format is propagated from the top video
driver /dev/videoX down to the sensor.
In a simple configuration sensor ==> isc , the isc just calls subdev s_fmt
and controls the sensor directly. This is achieved by having a lot of code
inside the driver that will query the subdev at probe time and make a list
of formats which are usable.
Basically the user has nothing to configure, as the isc will handle
everything at the top level. This is an easy way to capture, but also comes
with the drawback of lack of flexibility.
In a more complicated pipeline
sensor ==> controller 1 ==> controller 2 ==> isc
this will not be achievable, as controller 1 and controller 2 might be
media-controller configurable, and will not propagate the formats down to
the sensor.
After discussions with the media maintainers, the decision is to move
Atmel ISC to staging as-is, to keep the Kconfig symbols and the users
to the driver in staging. Thus, all the existing users of the non
media-controller paradigm will continue to be happy and use the old config
way.
The new driver was added in the media subsystem with a different
symbol, with the conversion to media controller done, and new users
of the driver will be able to use all the new features.
The replacement driver is named VIDEO_MICROCHIP_ISC or
VIDEO_MICROCHIP_XISC depending on the product flavor.
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