Re: keymap rule selection for non-DMI platforms

[Greg KH <greg@kroah.com>]

On Tue, Aug 16, 2011 at 09:39:37PM +0100, Daniel Drake wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 16, 2011 at 9:30 PM, Kay Sievers <kay.sievers@vrfy.org> wrote:
> > Sure, if there is something we all can use, we will switch over to it.
> > Until that happens, hacks have to be maintained by the people relying
> > on them, not by udev upstream.
> 
> You can use it. Just like many platforms (of varying architectures)
> already do in other contexts, all using unmodified Linus kernels.
> 
> Device tree is a well-documented cross-platform way of providing
> hardware identification information (and in great detail) to the
> kernel. I think it is the system you are asking for. Am I right in
> saying that its location in /proc is the main downfall that you are
> criticising it for? (i.e. would your viewpoint change if it appeared
> in /sys tomorrow?)

What about all of the existing device tree work that has been going on
in the kernel for the past year?  It should be in sysfs already, so why
not just use those files instead?

As for DMI being "desktop" specific, others agree, and tried to write
patches to rename everything.  I think they were rightly shot down as it
would have broken lots of userspace code, so there's no problem with
putting this type of information into the dmi "namespace" as it is.

greg k-h