Next step for libpciaccess

[Mike A. Harris]

Ian Romanick wrote:
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> The latest version of the libpciaccess code is available at:
> 
> http://users.freedesktop.org/~idr/pci/
> 
> It currently only supports recent Linux kernels with sysfs.  The
> intention is to provide a stable proof-of-concept implementation so that
> I can start the "real" work within the X server.
> 
> My intention is to add this code to the tree under lib.  I'm not going
> to add it to build.sh or anything like that.  I just want it in the tree
> so that people can (hint, hint) start making contributions for non-Linux
> platforms.
> 
> Until folks are happy with libpciaccess across the platforms that we
> support, all of my changes that use it will be made available as patches
> *only*.
> 
> The first thing that I'd like to do is completely replace the scanpci
> module with libpciaccess.  All of the functions provided by scanpci can
> be accomplished by libpciaccess.  The only catch is that libpciaccess
> uses and external file of PCI IDs.  Right now it assumes that this file
> is stored /usr/share/hwdata/pci.ids.  I suspect that is not a good
> assumption to make.  What *is* the right way to locate this file?

That path is a Red Hat'ism, which might possibly be used by other
Linux distros also, but I wouldn't assume that per se.

How about testing the OS and distro, and having some defaults for
certain OS's that can be properly detected, but having a
--with-pciids-path= option to ./configure to override any autodetection?


> Once the scanpci module is gone (or perhaps before!), the scanpci and
> pcitweak utilities can be replace with utilities (in util/) that use
> libpciaccess.  Given the existence of pciutils, I'm actually not
> convinced that these utilities still have a reason to exist at all.
> 
> Thoughts?  Opinions?  Dirty limericks?

I'd agree in general..   Do the pciutils utilities work on other OSs, or
are they Linux specific?  I've never really checked. ;)

-- 
Mike A. Harris  *  Open Source Advocate  *  http://mharris.ca
                       Proud Canadian.