[Libosinfo] [v2 1/8] API to query format of device driver

[Christophe Fergeau]

On Tue, Feb 19, 2013 at 03:41:18PM +0200, Zeeshan Ali (Khattak) wrote:
> Another important point that I neglected to mention is that drivers
> can come directly from app (without them adding/editing an XML). In
> which case these APIs would be nice to have so they can decide whether
> an arbitrary driver they want to install is compatible with our
> script(s) or not. Also, if the driver installation does not work, they
> can have some trace of what went wrong.

This also means that apps will have to check that the driver they are about
to install is in a known format before trying to use it, and fail if it's
not. But this unknown driver format could be similar to the existing ones
that copying all files is enough and things will just work. By adding this
API; apps would need a change to accomodate it.
Maybe we'll also add an API where the library user explicitly lists the
drivers they want to install (this would probably helps to get rid of this
*.cmd thing). This function could do the format checks and
error out if they are not compatible.
We really don't know what will be needed/not needed in the future, so let's
not add APIs that may or may not be needed, that may be helpful or that may
be harmful, but that apps have to use. If it proves needed in a while, it
will still be time to add it, if it's not needed, we'll be happy not to
have added it, and this will be less code in applications.

> BTW, if we decide to add these API then the driver signature API makes
> as much sense to add.

Actually I was surprised that you dropped the osinfo_driver_is_signed()
patch; this one seems good to me.

Christophe
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