[openbeos] Re: hardware scanner

That's the basic idea.
There needs to be a central repository (with mirrors) where all the drivers are stored though, and all the available drivers have to be turned into a standard format (i.e zip file) as Ryan suggests.
At the same time, and with the agreement into the HDMS by the user, Haiku could collect the hardware profile and use it for analysis on what isn't supported. This could be useful to determine what type of hardware Haiku users are using, and maybe be useful for say something like, oh I don't know, a bounty project :-p 

Karl


On 3-Jun-07, at 12:54 PM, Ryan Leavengood wrote:


On 6/3/07, Karl vom Dorff <karl@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


Is it possible to build up a database of such drivers available for
BeOS and have a hardware scanner suggest where/how to get the support
after the installation?

That would be computing simplified, instead of leaving it up to the
user to hunt down drivers; kind of like Windows update..


Good idea. A suggested implementation:

A simple web application provides a way for PCI vendor and device ID
(and other identifying information) to be associated with a particular
driver. Each driver could have an embedded unique ID to simplify
identifying drivers. The driver IDs in the database are then
associated with URLs for downloading. A simple driver package format
(like a zip file with a manifest that describes where the driver is to
be installed) could be used to automate installation. That is what the
URLs would point to.

Upon installation of Haiku, users are urged to join the "Haiku Driver
Management System", which will take all the hardware devices they have
working and upload that information to the web application (PCI IDs
and the working driver ID.) Any non-working devices will be queried
for on the web application. If a matching driver is found, it is
downloaded and installed. If no match is found, the user is politely
informed that unfortunately there is no driver for that device, but
the HDMS can query the system weekly to see if a driver has been
provided in the meantime.

We in the Haiku project can regularly query the hardware management
database to see which devices lacking drivers are the most popular.
This information can then be used by Haiku or other third party driver
writers to implement the most needed drivers.

Sounds pretty darn good to me :)

Ryan

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