RFC - device notifications idea

[Robert Shearman]

Damjan Jovanovic wrote:

>I was disappointed to see that "dynamic drive
>configuration"
>(http://www.winehq.org/?issue=313#Dynamic%20Drive%20Configuration)
>amounts to a few HAL functions in wine's explorer.
>
>Windows has been using device notifications for at
>least 11 years now (since Windows 95), and neither
>wine nor ReactOS have even begun this feature.
>
>I would be interested in implementing it by using
>dbus/HAL in wineserver, and translating HAL device
>notifications into equivalent WM_DEVICECHANGE messages
>which then get broadcast to all windows.
>  
>

WM_DEVICECHANGE is sent from explorer, but only for new drives. What's 
wrong with doing this in explorer still, but expanding the number of 
devices that are notified?

>Is any work being done in this area? If not, would
>this work? Are long-running functions requiring I/O
>(hal_device_get_property_...()) allowed in wineserver
>(which seems to be event-driven)? Any other comments?
>

Absolutely not. Any long-running functions will cause all of the user's 
winelib applications to freeze until the server unblocks.

Also, note that there is an exception handler in explorer around some 
hal functions because they assert on some platforms. You won't be able 
to port that to wineserver and it would be really bad news if an assert 
fired there.

-- 
Rob Shearman