Wine device drivers proposal

[Damjan Jovanovic]

--- Mike McCormack <mike at codeweavers.com> wrote:
> 
> Damjan Jovanovic wrote:
> 
> > I've been trying to add STI (still image) support
> to
> > Wine, and I've made some progress. However, I see
> a
> > deep and unsurmountable need to add (at least
> > user-space) device drivers to Wine, and I would
> like
> > some feedback on these ideas.
> 
> Drivers belong in the kernel.  If there's no Linux
> driver for a device, 
> then Wine cannot support it.  In that case, the
> first step is to write a 
>   Linux device driver for it, which has the added
> advantage that other 
> native linux applications can use the hardware.
> 
> The interface from user space to kernel space should
> be done via 
> standard Linux mechanisms, such as ioctl.  The
> Video4Linux API already 
> offers such an interface.
> 
> You can't load a Windows driver that accesses
> hardware in Wine, as Wine 
> is a user-space application with no I/O privileges.

I am not trying to _load_ a Windows driver (that
either requires kernel support for the Windows DDK,
like ndiswrapper has, or emulation of an entire x86,
like bochs does).

What I am trying to do is _replace_ a Windows driver
with equivalent libusb functionality, getting, in
effect, something like this:

Application (eg. the Gimp)
   |
   v
special SANE backend
   |
   v
SANE to TWAIN converter
   |
   v
Windows user-space TWAIN driver (by manufacturer)
   |
   v
  STI
   |
   v
Wine (with "drivers")
   |
   v
Wine (user-space) driver
   |
   v
libusb
   |
   v
kernel

> Mike

Damjan


		
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