Accessing remote devices

[Robert Love]

On Sat, 2004-01-31 at 19:59, David Zeuthen wrote:

> It seems that what Michael is after, is to standardize how such
> capability services/libraries should work in a network transparent way,
> or no?

Hey, David.

What I think Michael is aiming for is simply for HAL to store the remote
devices as it does the local ones.

Which is fine and cool, right?

The question is, how does HAL know about the remote devices.  One
suggestion Joe and I offered was to have whatever low-level remote
device discovery daemon the thin client runs simply send out D-BUS
messages about the new devices.  E.g., very little additional code on
HAL's part.

HAL could have some sort of 'address' property that would be a remote
IPC object that the system could use to access the device.

I definitely think that HAL should know about remote devices - I mean,
that is really neat, right? - but it shouldn't go out of its way.  But
if there is a way to simply tell HAL stuff like "there is a remote sound
system at this remote IPC address" then that seems pretty neat, and lets
HAL continue to be the center of the hardware universe, even on thin
clients et al. ;-)

	Robert Love