[Xorg] Input device hotplug

Egbert Eich eich at pdx.freedesktop.org
Fri Jul 2 06:25:11 PDT 2004


Kristian Høgsberg writes:
[...]

 > > No, adding this to an extension would only make sense if a functionality
 > > is to be network transparent. This doesn't seem to be the case for input
 > > devices. Input devices pysically live on the machine the server exists
 > > on. Therefore a local interface should suffice.
 > > I basically had the same idea like you when I implemented the interface
 > > for APM years ago. My first implementation used an extension however it
 > > didn't seem to make much sense in using an X client which would communicate
 > > with the server just to send information across that could be obtained
 > > by the Xserver itself.
 > > Therefore I decided to add an interface to the DDX splitting it into
 > > a OS independent and OS dependent part.
 > 
 > Even if you only need local access, I think it makes sense to implement 
 > it as an X request.  This avoids adding another ad-hoc IPC mechanism; 
 > you could create a unix socket and make a protocol for sending these 
 > requests back and forth, but I'ld rather just sidestep possible security 
 > implications and use what is already in place.

We should evaluate both possibilities.

 > 
 > But I think there might be a case for remote access, e.g. if you run a 
 > remote X session and the client wants to add/remove devices...
 > 

Hm, that is a different issue I think. Devices need to be detected locally.
Wether we want to advertise new devices to Xservers and have a mechanism by
which clients can tell the Xserver to open a specific device is a different
story.

Egbert.




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