[Nut-upsdev] Re: [nut-commits] svn commit r801 - in

[Arjen de Korte]

[...]

> The problem with this approach is that the variables need to be
> declared in upsdrv_makevartable(), which is shared between the megatec
> (serial) and megatec_usb drivers. So this part of the code would need
> to be specialized somehow (move it to megatec_usb.c, and make a new
> file megatec_serial.c, containing only serial-specific code).

I think we're trying to solve the problems of USB-to-serial UPS'es in the
wrong way here. This whole problem would not exist if the kernel would
auto detect the USB-to-serial converters in these devices and add a
/dev/ttyUSBx port (or something like that), so that existing drivers could
connect to it. Apparently, this doesn't happen right now (otherwise we
wouldn't be seeing all these problems), so we need a workaround here. I
think we should try to work in the direction of adding /dev/ttyUSBx ports
for these devices, rather than trying to do this in each individual
driver.

> Another option is to use the existing "port" variable, which is unused
> in USB, so that the user would specify something like ffff:0001:ablerex,
> which each ":" being optional, i.e., valid ports are:
>
> 1234                (vendorid only)
> 1234:5678           (vendorid and productid)
> 1234:5678:subdriver (vendorid, productid, and subdriver name)
>
> The advantage is that it needs no special new options. The
> disadvantage is limited flexibility for future extensions (match by
> serial number etc).

I don't like this. Setting 'port = auto' (even when it doesn't really
matter what is used) already confuses the heck out of some people, so this
is not going to improve things.

Best regards, Arjen
-- 
Eindhoven - The Netherlands
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