[RFC PATCH 0/3] serial: ns8250-compatible PCI UART driver

[Matthias Lange]

Hi,

for testing we use a couple of (x86) machines locked away in a server room. To
remotely control what to boot on these machines we use grub2 navigated via a
serial line. Some of those machines don't feature a traditional IO port based
UART. That's why we installed PCI UART cards with an OXSemiconductor chip.
The ns8250-compatible UARTs on those cards are programmed via MMIO.

I am sending three patches to add support for these UARTs to grub2. Basically
the first two patches lay the groundwork and introduce neccessary abstractions
so that patch 3 can implement the driver with a maximum of code reuse from the
existing ns8250 serial driver.

I am asking for guidance on how to get this feature upstream. I think the
driver is an interesting addition to grub and others might be interested in it
as well. At least we have a few customers who would like to use it as well.

I am happy to take your feedback.

Best regards,
Matthias.

Matthias Lange (3):
  serial: Add abstractions to ns8250 driver
  serial: Move static ns8250 functions to ns8250 interface
  serial: Add serial driver for ns8250 compatible PCI UART

 grub-core/Makefile.core.def      |   1 +
 grub-core/term/ns8250-pci-mmio.c | 186 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 grub-core/term/ns8250.c          |  59 ++++++++-----
 grub-core/term/serial.c          |   9 +-
 include/grub/ns8250.h            |  48 ++++++++++
 include/grub/pci.h               |   8 ++
 include/grub/serial.h            |  25 ++++++
 7 files changed, 312 insertions(+), 24 deletions(-)
 create mode 100644 grub-core/term/ns8250-pci-mmio.c

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2.7.4