Ring buffer support within IIO This document is intended as a general overview of the functionality a ring buffer may supply and how it is specified within IIO. For more specific information on a given ring buffer implementation, see the comments in the source code. Note that the intention is to allow some drivers to specify ring buffers choice at probe or runtime, but for now the selection is hard coded within a given driver. A given ring buffer implementation typically embedded a struct iio_ring_buffer and it is a pointer to this that is provided to the IIO core. Access to the embedding structure is typically done via container_of functions. struct iio_ring_buffer contains 4 function pointers (preenable, postenable, predisable, postdisable). These are used to perform implementation specific steps on either side of the core changing it's current mode to indicate that the ring buffer is enabled or disabled (along with enabling triggering etc as appropriate). Also in struct iio_ring_buffer is a struct iio_ring_access_funcs. The function pointers within here are used to allow the core to handle as much ring buffer functionality as possible. Note almost all of these are optional. mark_in_use, unmark_in_use Basically indicate that not changes should be made to the ring buffer state that will effect the form of the data being captures (e.g. scan elements or length) store_to If possible, push data to ring buffer. read_last If possible get the most recent entry from the buffer (without removal). This provides polling like functionality whilst the ring buffering is in use without a separate read from the device. rip_lots The primary ring buffer reading function. Note that it may well not return as much data as requested. The deadoffset is used to indicate that some initial data in the data array is not guaranteed to be valid. mark_param_changed Used to indicate that something has changed. Used in conjunction with request_update If parameters have changed that require reinitialization or configuration of the ring buffer this will trigger it. get_bytes_per_datum, set_bytes_per_datum Get/set the number of bytes for a complete scan. (All samples + timestamp) get_length / set_length Get/set the number of sample sets that may be held by the buffer. is_enabled Query if ring buffer is in use enable Start the ring buffer.