Re: Requirements definition

[Giacomo Catenazzi <cate debian org>]

Miles Lane wrote:
> Giacomo,
>
> We are exploring setting up a hardware detection system for a Gnome 
> project.  Do you think your owkr for CML2 might be a good
> start for this piece of the project?

yes. I worked mainly to make a database of devices/string to
kernel configuration option, but it is very general, so I think
it is usable for other project.
Problems: ISA and other old non-enumerable cards.
(My detection is very soft, no need of su privileges,
and not crash possible, so it is very difficult to
detect ISA cards. [Really if kernel as detected such cards,
no problems, so I moved such problems to "boot/system" kernel
maintainers.]
No problem with USB, PCI.

Really my tools (I have newer version, but not yet
released) are:
- An automatic script that check the kernel soruces for information
about devices and drivers.
- A database of probes, devices and needed driver (generated
  automagically by the first script + some other hand work).
- A probetools, it check data from kernel (list of pci devices,
  file systems, loaded modules, used resources,...) and
  extract kernel configuration form above database.

Obviously it can be changed to generate other useful
informations (from kernel configuration option, we can
find if it is a scsi/sound/... card, ...)

I didn't follow the gnome discussion, so I don't
know what are you needs.

ciao
	giacomo