mobile phone (obex) support in hal

[Alex Kanavin]

Hi folks,

I would like to add support for USB OBEX interfaces that many modern
mobile phones (all higher-end Nokia and SE for example) have. They
usually look like this:

    Interface Descriptor:
      bLength                 9
      bDescriptorType         4
      bInterfaceNumber        6
      bAlternateSetting       0
      bNumEndpoints           0
      bInterfaceClass         2 Communications
      bInterfaceSubClass     11 OBEX
      bInterfaceProtocol      0
      iInterface              6 PC Suite Services
      CDC Header:
        bcdCDC               1.10
      CDC OBEX:
        bcdVersion           1.00
      CDC Union:
        bMasterInterface        6
        bSlaveInterface         7

There are many things you can do over these interfaces: access the
phones' filesystem, synchronize calendar/contacts/notes, install
software, and do other kinds of device management. As far as I see
there are two things that need to be done in hal:

1) Often phones provide more than one interface, for different
purposes. The only way to find out the purpose is to read its
description (iInterface above) but currently hal does not support
this. It should be very easy to fix, I have filed a bug report with
more information:
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9215

2) There should be a new device category, called perhaps 'usb-obex'
(which more or less equals 'mobile phone'), with possible optional
subcategory, based on the interface purpose - 'syncml', 'nokia pc
suite' and so on. This should be done with a device information file.

Tell me what you think please.

-- 
Alexander