Re: [MAINTAINERS SUMMIT] Device Passthrough Considered Harmful?

Jiri Kosina
2024-07-23T11:20:28Z

On Mon, 8 Jul 2024, Dan Williams wrote:

> 2/ Device passthrough, kernel passing opaque payloads, is already taken
> for granted in many subsystems. USB and HID have "raw" interfaces

Just as a completely random datapoint here: after I implemented hidraw
inteface long time ago, I was a little bit hesitant about really merging
it, because there was a general fear that this would shatter the HID
driver ecosystem, making it difficult for people to find proper drivers
for their devices, etc.

Turns out that that didn't happen. Drivers for generic devices are still
implemented properly in the kernel, and hidraw is mostly used for rather
specific, one-off solutions, where the vendor's business plan is "ship
this one appliance and forget forever", which doesn't really cause any
harm to the whole ecosystem.

--
Jiri Kosina
SUSE Labs