Re: new modular hid?

[Dmitry Torokhov <dmitry.torokhov@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Jan 13, 2009 at 12:54:06AM +0100, Jiri Kosina wrote:
> 
> [ added Jiri Slaby to CC ]
> 
> On Mon, 12 Jan 2009, Michael Tokarev wrote:
> 
> > I tried to run a new (2.6.28) kernel today, to discover that
> > my keyboard does not work anymore.  After investigation it
> > turned out the keyboard is now handled by a hid-sub-driver,
> > hid-bright, and it does not work if this (mostly one-liner)
> > driver module is not loaded.
> >
> > udev/m.i.t works fine, it's the initramfs which is broken.
> > I.e., there's no keyboard during initramfs stage, only when
> > udev runs and loads everything - as much as i hate it, it
> > becomes more and more mandatory, but that's another story.
> > 
> > Before 2.6.28, I used to include usbhid into initramfs.
> > Now, it's not sufficient anymore.
> > 
> > So I've two questions:
> > 
> > 1) which drivers to include into ramfs and load for a
> >  "generic USB keyboard" to work?  Maybe from now on one
> >  have to use usbkbd instead of usbhid?  I just want to
> >  be able to do some rescue stuff before actual system
> >  startup in case a system does not boot for whatever
> >  reason (root fs is corrupt or wrong raid1 replacement
> >  disk or whatever).
> > 
> > 2) why all those tiny "subdrivers" in the first place?
> >  I looked into several of them, and they're mostly sort
> >  of quirks or some additional features or additional key
> >  (re)mapping.  Why can't it all be done in the main driver
> >  instead, just like it is done for PCI bus for example?
> >  The amount of real-work code is tiny, modules are much
> >  bigger - both the resulting .ko files and all the
> >  init/exit wrappers in .c files...
> > 

I would agree with Michael here, it looks like we went a bit
overboard with HID quirks. I think sensible solution would be to
merge quirks into 3-4 files (one per device type) and maybe even
compile keyboard quirks into hid core.

Of course if we see that there are big sub-drivers appear we can
still have them split out.

-- 
Dmitry