16 lines
805 B
Plaintext
16 lines
805 B
Plaintext
What is the point of HAL?
|
|
|
|
To merge information from various sources such that desktop applications can
|
|
locate and use hardware devices. The point is that the exact set of
|
|
information to merge varies by device and bus type. In order to do this, we
|
|
need to define a format for the information, hence the HAL specification.
|
|
|
|
We may read some stuff from the hardware itself, then add some info provided
|
|
by the kernel, then add some metadata from some systemwide files, then add
|
|
some data that has been obtained by the desktop and stored per-user, then
|
|
look at some blacklist, and finally we have a complete picture of everything
|
|
known about that particular device.
|
|
|
|
An extra value is that we can do this in an operating system independent way.
|
|
Stuff like this is important to the major desktop environments.
|