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When asking my question about software drivers, when tagging it I noticed that there doesn't seem to be a tag appropriate for software device drivers.

Current description for indicates it is about driver circuits and ICs. Just looking at recently active for shows two mislabeled questions about software drivers.

Should one be created?

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  • \$\begingroup\$ perhaps the help center should clarify whether microcontroller programming is on-topic \$\endgroup\$
    – user20574
    Commented Apr 4, 2023 at 18:03
  • \$\begingroup\$ @user253751 I don't have a link at hand, but there's a question, I think back from the time this site was beta, stating that programming related to interacting with hardware is on-topic. So drivers - be it bare metal or under an OS - are on-topic. \$\endgroup\$
    – jaskij
    Commented Apr 5, 2023 at 9:20
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    \$\begingroup\$ It's arguable if anything that is powerful enough to run Linux is really an embedded system to begin with. Please note that "embedded systems programming" is not necessarily on topic here, the help pages say "writing of firmware for bare-metal or RTOS applications". That covers microcontroller and FPGA programming. Historically PLC programming questions have also been considered on-topic. \$\endgroup\$
    – Lundin
    Commented Apr 6, 2023 at 8:49

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"Driver" is a pretty bad name for a tag, since it is awfully broad and ambiguous. In this context it could mean:

  • The code in your microcontroller that handles a certain hardware peripheral, or
  • Libraries delivered together with some piece of hardware for use in a hosted system (off-topic here), or
  • Driver circuits such as charge pumps, LED drivers, motor drivers, high/low side drivers, you name it.

Instead, you could use the tag or better yet, the specific tag for the MCU family you are using. In case no tag exists for the MCU family, then feel free to create one.

In this specific case, I don't think we benefit from an "i.MX" tag since that's also very broad and could mean a lot of different things. The i.MX RT and i.MX 7 families could perhaps do with tags since they are on-topic here. The rest of them, well that's hosted system Cortex A and I really don't think they are on-topic here. Questions about Cortex A programming using hosted systems should instead be asked on Stack Overflow.

Unless of course your question is about the hardware/electronics aspects of whatever your software is doing, then it should be on-topic here.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ I was going off of this old question here on meta EE. The problem with giving good and bad categories comes when something falls in neither. It is most certainly worth asking a separate question which I will be asking shortly. \$\endgroup\$
    – jaskij
    Commented Apr 6, 2023 at 14:06
  • \$\begingroup\$ Disregarding the issue of whether hosted OS drivers are on-topc, microcontroller or tag for a specific MCU don't solve the issue of interacting with external peripherals (say, code talking to an ADC or a radio transceiver over SPI). \$\endgroup\$
    – jaskij
    Commented Apr 6, 2023 at 14:26

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