Hardware Database (WAS Re: RH recommends using Windows? plus a Question!)

[David Zeuthen]

On Wed, 2003-11-05 at 22:06, Maxwell Kanat-Alexander wrote:
> On Wed, 2003-11-05 at 12:52, David Zeuthen wrote:
> > There's been quite a lot of discussion on the xdg-list about the device
> > information file format (I call them .fdi files - for Free Device
> > Information) and the conclusion was that these files will be XML and
> > resemble the Progeny discover file format with few changes.
> 
> 	All right. Sounds a lot like what we were thinking of, as well.
> 
> 	Perhaps our tool could generate these files.
>
> 	Or, instead, perhaps the server could generate them from the database,
> which would be good since we could keep more up-to-date on file-format
> changes and it would be easy (at 3 AM, I'd hope) to refresh your entire
> freedesktop.org DB.
> 

Yeah - of course in the ideal situation the device vendor ships the .fdi
file on standard media and/or submits it to your database. However, the
community will initially have to create these files. 

Now, .fdi files should also be signed so there must be some way of
moderating what comes from your database; maybe some karma/voting system
for contributing users would fit the bill here?

> > Deployment-wise freedesktop.org could possibly host a database, the
> > Fedora project could host one and maybe, someday, hardware vendors
> > and/or OEM's could host one.
> 
> 	Sure. Maybe Fedora could host the central information database itself,
> and freedesktop.org could hold the fdi database. The fdi database would
> hold the automated access for the HAL, and the Fedora database would
> host the user-searching-for-hardware-info side.
> 
> 	And, of course, if hardware vendors wanted to pitch in somehow as well,
> nobody would object! :-)
> 
> 
> 	It definitely sounds like we could work together on a lot of things!

Definately! I will however concentrate on getting hal 0.2 finished so it
works with PCI and USB devices and storage. When that is done I'll look
into packaging it for FC1 and see how it fits in. Automated retrival of
.fdi files from a database such as yours and signing stuff is something
that will come after that

Btw, I intend that each device object in HAL to export a lot of device
specific information (right now only USB is documented, but I got PCI
working as well); perhaps it would be good already now to agree on
naming conventions (e.g. I call it usb.bDeviceClass) for specific
hardware properties? 

Thanks,
David