The 2.6.38 kernel has dropped videodev.h

[GreyGeek]

A fact I discovered after trying to get Natty to see a six year old Sony VAIO SZ110 laptop's Richo webcam (05ca:1830).
I downloaded the r5u870 i386 deb packages and installed them. The firmware pkg installed OK but the driver failed in its attempt to build r5u870.ko module. The reason was a failure to find the videodev.h header file.

A Google search found:
http://www.mail-archive.com/linux-me.../msg27519.html

With v4l1 support going completely away, the question is raised what to do with linux/videodev.h .

Since v4l1 apps can still use the old API through libv4l1, these apps will still need linux/videodev.h to compile.

So I see 3 options:
1) Keep videodev.h in the kernel tree even after we've dropped the API support at the kernel level (seems like a bad idea to me)
2) Copy videodev.h over to v4l-utils as is (under a different name) and modify the #include in libv4l1.h to include it under the
new name
3) Copy the (needed) contents of videodev.h over to libv4l1.h

I'm not sure where I stand wrt 2 versus 3. Comments anyone?

Regards,
Hans

The consensus was option #3

This suggestion was made:

The ones that don't have videodev.h will compile-break on distros. So distros will need to do something to keep it working, or they'll just drop those pre-historic beasts. It is the Evolution Theory working for software: to adapt or to be extinguished

The ones that are shipped with videodev.h and weren't converted to libv4l might eventually stay there for a longer time, as people will only notice when a bug will be reported. If we know what are those apps, then we can add a blacklist at linuxtv and/or contact interested parties on fixing/removing them.

We should touch the tools that we care of. Maybe Devin could change tvtime, we should remove V4L1 driver from xawtv3/xawtv4.

Regards,
Mauro

My options are to download and install an older release of Kubuntu (10.4) or advice the person tha the best move would be to buy a new(er) laptop. I'm going with the latter.