Re: [Qemu-devel] kFreeBSD and USB support

[Hans de Goede <hdegoede@redhat.com>]

Hi,

On 06/06/2013 02:47 PM, Gerd Hoffmann wrote:
>    Hi,
>
>> This effectively disables host usb support for
>> kFreeBSD.  And since I guess the kernel headers
>> are the same on regular FreeBSD, I think the same
>> issue happens on regular FreeBSD too, that is,
>> host usb does not work there as well.
>>
>> What is the status of this situation now?
>
> I have no idea how well the host-bsd code actually works.  I've used an
> OpenBSD (virtual machine) for build tests.  Last time I tried it did not
> build on FreeBSD.  No idea where NetBSD (or any other variant) stands.
>
> My long-term plan for usb-host support is to build on libusbx
> exclusively (merged in the 1.5 devel cycle), thereby offloading all
> portability issues to libusbx.  Right now we are in a transition period,
> the old code is still around so you can flip back and forward between
> libusbx implementation and the os-specific bits for linux/bsd, mainly
> because a pretty recent linusbx version is required and also to ease
> regression testing.  At some point in the future I want get rid of the
> old code though.
>
> FreeBSD reportly has its own libusb implementation, with a library
> interface compatible to libusbx.  That should work with kFreeBSD too.  I
> don't know what the other BSD variants are doing, but due to libusbx
> being used by alot of userspace usb apps/drivers I'd expect it is
> present in some form usable for qemu's host-libusb code ...

Yes, on FreeBSD it is best to use FreeBSD's libusb replacement implementation
which is API compatible, this likely is also best used on Debian-kfreebsd
(as a replacement for the regular libusb).

Regular libusb currently has linux, macosx, openbsd, netbsd and win32
backends. With linux being the most feature complete, your mileage may vary
on other platforms, but all the basics are there, so if necessary people could
spend some time on fixing libusb's backend code for a platform they care about.

Regards,

Hans