[ltp] tp_smapi versions

[Wade Curry]

Hello,

I'm on a W500, and using Gentoo (Funtoo, actually).  I've been
frustrated with some of the things that don't work right because I
know they could.  The docs out there are not always up to date,
names of projects overlap... so I ended up uninstalling tpctl and
tpb as I discovered they were obsolete.

My kernel is 2.6.37-gentoo-r1 and I've installed the tp_smapi
ebuild which installs hdaps.ko, thinkpad_ec.ko, and tp_smapi.ko in
the extra/  directory.  I also have a
kernel/drivers/platform/x86/thinkpad-acpi.ko module which I enabled
in the kernel config.  I assume that I should not have enabled
that kernel parameter, and will try again without it, but a couple
questions came up as I investigated.

1)  It appears that the thinkpad-acpi driver is at version .40, and
that the last updates to the code were in 2008.  The version in the
kernel sources is only version .24...   What's going on with
maintenance of these modules?  Is it possible I'm not using the
right one, or I'm looking in the wrong place?

2) Where as the in-kernel version produces a thinkpad-acpi.ko, the
newer ebuild version doesn't.  It produces thinkpad_ec.ko and
tp_smapi.ko instead.  What are the significant differences here?

3) If I decide to patch my kernel directly with the newest version
of the code, will I be asking for a headache?  Applying the patch
doesn't present a problem, but if the code hasn't been updated
since 2008, it's possible the gentoo dev applied patches to make it
work (plus it builds it outside the tree).

Thanks!

Wade Curry