RFC: HAL probing for VMware vmmouse device

[Peter Hutterer]

On Fri, Oct 17, 2008 at 05:33:33PM -0700, Philip Langdale wrote:
> I've attached example fdi and callout script implementations (the vmmouse-detect
> binary that is referred to is debian/ubuntu specific but that can be folded into
> a hald-probe style binary or bundled elsewhere if desired)
>
> So, one option is to write hald-probe-vmmouse and include it with the main hal package.
> In that case, it would not actually set input.x11_driver, but some more generic
> property and then the x11-input fdi would check that property to set x11_driver.
>
> Alternatively it could live outside of hal - possibly with the X11 driver package
> itself, but I'm concerned about how successfully it would be deployed in that situation.

synaptics and wacom provide their own fdi files and they work fine. I wouldn't
worry about deployment issues too much.

I don't think that x11-input.fdi should check of a generic property just in
case vmmouse sets it. this seems like complicating the case for the large
majority of users who don't need to run vmmouse. the driver-specific fdi files
are invoked after x11-input.fdi, so it's trivial to just overwrite the values
with your own ones.

aside from that: I don't know what the HAL's community take on the callout
scripts is, but it seems like a simple enough approach.

Cheers,
  Peter