Attention
This is a temporary API and it shall be replaced by the generic clock API, when the latter becomes widely available.
Many subdevices, like camera sensors, TV decoders and encoders, need a clock signal to be supplied by the system. Often this clock is supplied by the respective bridge device. The Linux kernel provides a Common Clock Framework for this purpose. However, it is not (yet) available on all architectures. Besides, the nature of the multi-functional (clock, data + synchronisation, I2C control) connection of subdevices to the system might impose special requirements on the clock API usage. E.g. V4L2 has to support clock provider driver unregistration while a subdevice driver is holding a reference to the clock. For these reasons a V4L2 clock helper API has been developed and is provided to bridge and subdevice drivers.
The API consists of two parts: two functions to register and unregister a V4L2 clock source: v4l2_clk_register() and v4l2_clk_unregister() and calls to control a clock object, similar to the respective generic clock API calls: v4l2_clk_get(), v4l2_clk_put(), v4l2_clk_enable(), v4l2_clk_disable(), v4l2_clk_get_rate(), and v4l2_clk_set_rate(). Clock suppliers have to provide clock operations that will be called when clock users invoke respective API methods.
It is expected that once the CCF becomes available on all relevant architectures this API will be removed.