[PATCH] pnp.ids

[David Zeuthen]

Pozsár Balázs wrote:
> I don't like this download-on-demand thingy... why not simply
> "just work", or, if not, update the system packages and then just work?

The system packages only gives vendor/model which is TERRIBLY NON 
INTERESTING in terms of getting things to "Just Work". And it's not 
really required in the UI as well, though it does leak into 
NetworkManager and GNOME VFS. Either way, it's not really interesting.

Here's what interesting though:

Use-case: You plug in a webcam and you don't have drivers. You click the 
"search for driver" button and we retrieve a .fdi file saying "use the 
foobar42 driver" - this can be retrieve from either the media supplied 
by the hardware vendor (in a 1000 years) or from the Internet (more 
likely). Somehow, magically, your distributions package manager finds 
that it needs to apt-get or yum this or that package that provides the 
foobar42 driver that works with your current kernel. Bingo, stuff works.

So, yeah, the view here is that to make things just work, we do need a 
huge database of much more interesting information than what pci.ids and 
usb.ids can provide us.

Sure, to build and grow this database we need some UI tools for letting 
people say "Oh, so this USB device with vendor_id 0x0f00 and product_id 
0x0ba3 should have info.vendor="ACME CORP", info.product="USB Light 
Saber", info.use_this_driver_on_linux26="light_saber_driver", 
info.use_this_firmware_on_linux26="light_saber_rev3b_firmware".

David
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