Scope and Using devices

[Joe Shaw]

On Fri, 2004-05-28 at 21:55 +0200, Kristian Høgsberg wrote:
> So if HAL is not the minimal discovery framework, and if we can not 
> fully abstract away the devices, then what is HAL?  Something blurry in 
> between?

I think it's somewhere in between.  I think that when we can represent
details of the hardware as simple properties we should.  I don't think
that HAL is a panacea for all hardware device access.  Like you say,
libraries (hopefully built on to of libhal!) will always be needed to
actually use and interface with those device nodes.  That's not HAL's
job.

I guess this is also why I feel like having APIs like SetESSID() is kind
of icky.  Why not then have GetPhotos() or PlayAudioFile()?

> I think read only properties make sense in the device-discovery-only 
> case: the reason HAL should provide properties is for the purpose of 
> selecting the right device.  For examlpe,  In this case I think it makes 
> sense that you can read them but not set them.

I totally agree iff the purpose is only device discovery.  My feeling
though is that HAL has a greater purpose of making simple access to the
hardware simpler.

Joe


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