events in evdev.c

[Daniel Stone]

On Sat, Sep 20, 2008 at 11:48:08AM -0400, Chuck Robey wrote:
> Daniel Stone wrote:
> > On Sat, Sep 20, 2008 at 04:59:33PM +0200, Matthieu Herrb wrote:
> >> Chuck Robey wrote:
> >>> I'm really rather curious where you got the idea that FreeBSD had something that
> >>> looked even vaguely like the Linux events.  I know that if you look at the
> >>> FreeBSD man page EVENTHANDLER(9) you can see an event interface, but that one is
> >>> intra-kernel, not exported to applications like the Linux one is.  Using the
> >>> event interface, like evdev does, takes away the portability.
> >>>
> >>> If I could find a FreeBSD applications-event interface ala Linux, I would be
> >>> overjoyed, and immediately use it.
> >> NetBSD and OpenBSD share (at least try to) the wscons console driver
> >> which has a notion of event which is not too far away from evdev. It
> >> should be possible to write a more OS neutral event based input driver
> >> which could cover all of Solaris, Linux and wscons events.
> > 
> > Eh, might as well write xf86-input-wscons.  I don't see what benefit
> > you'd gain by sharing a codebase, aside from added complexity and #ifdef
> > hell, a la xf86-input-{keyboard,mouse}.
> 
> I myself really like the approach that xf86-input-joystick takes, it allows the
> approach that evdev takes for Linux, but it doesn't try to suppose that the
> event interface that only works for Linux can work for other OSes.  You know how
> evdev is usually put forward as the best example of driver writing?  I think
> that the joystick is a way better (more portable) example.  Other OSes *do* have
> events, but they're intra-kernel only, not exported to apps.  And, FreeBSD
> doesn't have wscons (although I like that idea, myself).

Your argument would make sense if X didn't go to painful lengths to
maintain an abstract input driver API/ABI that allowed for arbitrary
drivers.
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