Alex Shinn <foof@synthcode.com> writes:
> device drivers is that they become outdated so quickly. I buy a new
> digital camera and it doesn't have any support under Linux, the HW
> manufacturers won't provide specs, and Linux+C is a terrible platform
> for reverse engineering and experimental driver development. It would
> be much better to have a nice Lisp/Scheme repl where you can
> interactively query the HW and write newer drivers faster. It would be
> worth the initial time investment.
Although this is a reasonable position as stated, I get the impression
that you think the advantage would be great enough to allow you to
punt all the _other_ drivers you do already have in
Linux/free-unix-of-your-choice. PCI bus and bridges, power
management, ACPI, IDE and SCSI, USB, i2c, exciting long blacklists and
ten years assorted workarounds for specific devices that don't
actually follow specs, networking (ethernet, 802.11, etc), video
cards. Not only do you have to write the drivers, you have to go
through all the same contortions as the free unix people have done to
get contacts at the company, sign NDAs, and the rest of that hassle.
Without the critical mass of something Linux-developer-base-sized, it
sounds like a lot of work. And as you observe, they become out of
date so quickly.
Not having done much of this kind of work, but my suspicion is that
if you want to interactively query the hardware, your first investment
should be in a logic analyser, not a repl.
-dan
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