On 1/22/09, Jeffrey Hutzelman <jh...@cmu.edu> wrote: > > > > > Yes, udev supports it as well. But most vendors prefer HAL for this > > > purpose nowadays. > > > > > > > vendors? You mean Novell, right? > > > > Most of the major Linuxes, both commercial and otherwise. > I believe Sun is also going down this path.
For GUI desktop I understand the need. But smartcards should be used also outside of this environment. > Yes, pcscd supports using HAL to detect hotplugging of USB devices. It > also supports using libusb directly, so not wanting to use HAL is not a > reason to abandon pcsc-lite. Please, come back. :-) Well, Ludovic knows my arguments... 1. pcscd is very complex. 2. pcscd uses a complex threading model, making it very hard to follow and debug. It also create many edge conditions when it tries to kill threads or manage signals (device remove and such). 3. pcscd must run as root... A none root mode may be supported but never implemented. 4. Due to the threading limitation of libusb or kenrel pcscd polls readers every 2 seconds which waste CPU and power resources. 5. The udev support was dropped in favor of hal, which added dependency for all scenarios. 6. The libusb support polls the USB bus... So it is irrelevant. While openct... 1. Much simpler. 2. Does not use threads. 3. Runs as none root. 4. Does not use hal or libusb. 5. Can be used with udev and mdev. 6. At least ccid and etoken drivers does not poll devices. I think that if we had enough resources we would have able to design and implement openct like reader process (ifdhandler) one process for every reader. And provide API interface both for PC/SC and CT. This way we enjoy the simplicity of one process per reader and the independent API for applications. These processes can be run using udev/mdev/hal while the API can communicate with these processes. Just a thought... Alon. _______________________________________________ opensc-devel mailing list opensc-devel@lists.opensc-project.org http://www.opensc-project.org/mailman/listinfo/opensc-devel
