Re: Device Registry (DevReg) Patch 0.2.0

[Martin Dalecki <dalecki@evision-ventures.com>]

Tim Jansen wrote:
> 
> On Tuesday 24 April 2001 11:40, Martin Dalecki wrote:
> > Tim Jansen wrote:
> > > The Linux Device Registry (devreg) is a kernel patch that adds a device
> > > database in XML format to the /proc filesystem. It collects all
> > OH SHIT!!      ^^^
> > Why don't you just add postscript output to /proc?
> 
> XML wasn't my first choice. The 0.1.x versions used simple name/value pairs,
> I gave this up after trying to fit the complex USB
> configuration/interface/endpoint data into name/value pairs. Thinking about
> text file formats that allow me to display hierarchical information,  XML was
> the obvious choice for me. Are there alternatives to get complex and
> extendable information out to user space? (see
> http://www.tjansen.de/devreg/devreg.output.txt for a example /proc/devreg
> output)

Yes filesystem structures. Or just simple parsing in the user space
plain binary
data.

> My other ideas were:
> - using a simple binary format, just dump structs. This would break all
> applications every time somebody changes the format, and this should happen
> very often because of the nature of the format
> - using a complicated, extendable binary format, for example chunk-based like
> (a|r)iff file formats. This would add more code in the kernel than XML
> output, is difficult to understand and requires more work in user space
> (because XML parsers are already available)
> - making up a new text-based format with properties similar to XML because I
> knew that many people dont like the idea of XML output in the kernel.. I
> really thought about it, but it does not make much sense.
> 
> The actual code overhead of XML output compared to a format like
> /proc/bus/usb/devices is almost zero, XML is only a little bit more verbose.
> I agree that XML is not perfect for this kind of data, but it is simple to
> generate, well known and I dont see a better alternative.
> 
> bye..
> 
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