[rant] keeping policy in HAL

[Paulo César Pereira de Andrade]

> On Mon, Dec 01, 2008 at 01:33:02PM +0000, Colin Guthrie wrote:
>> 2. If the evdev driver is not installed on the system it does not flip
>> it's default.
>
> Arguably, that's a busted configuration. The standard fdi tells HAL to add
> input.x11_driver=evdev (on linux systems). If you then deny X the driver
> you
> explicitly told it to load, you end up without input devices.

  There is one problem with hal, that is with the current mini pcs,
and related work to have a "fast boot". Needing to have hal up and
running before the X Server would be a tough task.

  One possible solution, that I proposed some time ago (but got no
response) would be to add something like an "UDI" option to input
devices. So, one could have something like this in his xorg.conf:

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier "Mouse1"
    Driver "mouse"
    Option "UDI"
"/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/platform_i8042_i8042_AUX_port_logicaldev_input"
    Option "Protocol" "ExplorerPS/2"
    Option "Device" "/dev/mouse"
EndSection

  Then, the code in config/hal.c:device_added() or somewhere in
hw/xfree86/xf86Xinput.c could check that, and if it matches the
device that was about to be added, just leave it alone...

> Pretty much the same behaviour when you remove mouse/kbd, btw.
>
> Cheers,
>   Peter

Paulo