[Rxtx] dynamic usb updates

[Trent Jarvi]

On Tue, 12 Sep 2006, Dr. Douglas Lyon wrote:

> Hi All,
> You know, dynamic USB updates seem like a good idea, to me.
> On the other hand, to add a PortIO USB to serial converter,
> I had to:
> 1. Download the latest driver,
> 2. Install the hardware,
> 3. Install the driver and
> 4. Reboot the system (this is part of the installer).
>
> Considering that USB should be hot pluggable, I am not
> sure why rebooting is required. What is going on here?
>
> Rebooting a UNIX system, for a USB addition, is typically rare, right?
>
> Does the specification on the Comm API have to change in order
> to accommodate the dynamic USB update?
>

Hi Doug

We would need to handle events.  First RXTX would need to have a class 
that listened for the hotplug events.  Linux, solaris (soon?) and Mac OS X 
should have such capability.  Windows probably too but I've not seen how 
that works.  This would involve native code at least on some OSs.

Then the applications would need to implement a hotplug event listener or 
the API would just silently do it in the background.  This has not really 
been defined yet.

--
Trent Jarvi
tjarvi at qbang.org