Idea for joystick support in sandbox/SDL

[Alexander Larsson]

On tis, 2016-06-21 at 10:40 +1000, Peter Hutterer wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 20, 2016 at 05:39:25PM +0200, Bastien Nocera wrote:
> > 
> > Hey,
> > 
> > I've been looking at how we can support joysticks in flatpak,
> > inside
> > the sandbox[1]. As udev's API is a private/system API, and not one
> > stable enough for sandboxed applications to use, and the fact that
> > even
> > though they're input devices their events don't go through the
> > compositor itself, we need to find a way to enumerate joysticks,
> > signal
> > additions and removals, and proxy opening them.
> > 
> > My idea was for the compositor offering this D-Bus API:
> > 
> > - Method:
> > ao ListJoysticks()
> > 
> > - Signals
> > JoystickAdded(o)
> > JoystickRemoved(o)
> > 
> > And on the object path for each joystick:
> > 
> > - Method:
> > fd OpenJoystick()
> > 
> > Signal:
> > JoystickRemoved()
> > 
> > Properties:
> > s HapticsFeatures [2]
> > 
> > To avoid one application taking the joystick and doing things with
> > it
> > (rumble to death?), we'd revoke the fd given to an application when
> > the
> > application loses focus.
> > 
> > Is this doable? Is this good API?
> Aside from the HapticsFeatures this is a generic API that could be
> used for
> other devices too, not just joysticks. So I'm wondering if it makes
> sense to
> push the haptics detection to the client and make this a generic API
> for
> direct device access. The Space Navigator device comes to mind here.

Kinda like a org.freedesktop.MiniUdevWithOpen?

-- 
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 Alexander Larsson                                            Red Hat, Inc 
       alexl at redhat.com            alexander.larsson at gmail.com 
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