[Spice-devel] [PATCH] smartcard: add channel

[Alexander Larsson]

On Tue, 2010-09-14 at 14:50 -0400, Alon Levy wrote:
> ----- "Gerd Hoffmann" <kraxel at redhat.com> wrote:

> > I don't think this is a good idea.  This is just a chardev
> > passthrough, 
> > right?  If so, then we should just make it that.  Name it 'chardev' or
> > 
> > 'datapipe' or something simliar.  Have a additional 'init' message to
> > 
> > specify the kind of chardev.  Then we can just reuse it when we'll
> > have 
> > more simliar users in the future.
> > 
> 
> Do you think this is a better direction then adding the actual messages? (see below)

I don't think its better.

> > Or we could make this a real interface definition where each smartcard
> > 
> > message gets its own message type.
> > 
> 
> Yes, I was lazy - actually let me back up a little. For the smartcard reader
> device to be viable on it's own, it has to talk some protocol that is defined
> outside of spice. That protocol is also a header "type/size" protocol, so it is
> easy to write the spice.proto channel definition for it - that's were I was lazy
> and haven't done it. I guess it's time to be less lazy.

Sounds good to me. Then you'd get automatic (de)marshalling support for
it in the client too.

> > Oh, and shouldn't the channel-specific messages better start with
> > '101' 
> > like all other channels do?
> 
> Yeah. Anyone know why they start at that particular number?

Its because all channels derive from BaseChannel, adding some unused
numbers so that it can be extended in the future.