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The libcamera Architecture section of the introduction is largely a duplicate of the section broken out from docs.rst. Remove it from the introduction.rst file and consolidate anything that wasn't duplicated into libcamera_architecture.rst and feature_requirements.rst. Take the opportunity to also expand the list of Platform Support which is now a bit out of date. Signed-off-by: Daniel Scally <dan.scally@ideasonboard.com> Reviewed-by: Laurent Pinchart <laurent.pinchart@ideasonboard.com> Signed-off-by: Laurent Pinchart <laurent.pinchart@ideasonboard.com>
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62 lines
2.9 KiB
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.. SPDX-License-Identifier: CC-BY-SA-4.0
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.. include:: ../documentation-contents.rst
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Developers guide to libcamera
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=============================
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The Linux kernel handles multimedia devices through the 'Linux media' subsystem
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and provides a set of APIs (application programming interfaces) known
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collectively as V4L2 (`Video for Linux 2`_) and the `Media Controller`_ API
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which provide an interface to interact and control media devices.
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Included in this subsystem are drivers for camera sensors, CSI2 (Camera
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Serial Interface) receivers, and ISPs (Image Signal Processors)
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The usage of these drivers to provide a functioning camera stack is a
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responsibility that lies in userspace which is commonly implemented separately
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by vendors without a common architecture or API for application developers.
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libcamera provides a complete camera stack for Linux based systems to abstract
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functionality desired by camera application developers and process the
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configuration of hardware and image control algorithms required to obtain
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desirable results from the camera.
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.. _Video for Linux 2: https://www.linuxtv.org/downloads/v4l-dvb-apis-new/userspace-api/v4l/v4l2.html
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.. _Media Controller: https://www.linuxtv.org/downloads/v4l-dvb-apis-new/userspace-api/mediactl/media-controller.html
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In this developers guide the `Licensing`_ requirements of the project are
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detailed.
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This introduction is followed by a walkthrough tutorial to newcomers wishing to
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support a new platform with the `Pipeline Handler Writers Guide`_ and for those
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looking to make use of the libcamera native API an `Application Writers Guide`_
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provides a tutorial of the key APIs exposed by libcamera.
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.. _Pipeline Handler Writers Guide: pipeline-handler.html
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.. _Application Writers Guide: application-developer.html
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.. TODO: Correctly link to the other articles of the guide
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Licensing
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---------
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The libcamera core, is covered by the `LGPL-2.1-or-later`_ license. Pipeline
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Handlers are a part of the libcamera code base and need to be contributed
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upstream by device vendors. IPA modules included in libcamera are covered by a
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free software license, however third-parties may develop IPA modules outside of
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libcamera and distribute them under a closed-source license, provided they do
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not include source code from the libcamera project.
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The libcamera project itself contains multiple libraries, applications and
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utilities. Licenses are expressed through SPDX tags in text-based files that
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support comments, and through the .reuse/dep5 file otherwise. A copy of all
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licenses are stored in the LICENSES directory, and a full summary of the
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licensing used throughout the project can be found in the COPYING.rst document.
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Applications which link dynamically against libcamera and use only the public
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API are an independent work of the authors and have no license restrictions
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imposed upon them from libcamera.
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.. _LGPL-2.1-or-later: https://spdx.org/licenses/LGPL-2.1-or-later.html
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