DeviceKit

DeviceKit is a modular hardware abstraction layer designed for use in Linux systems that is designed to simplify device management and replace the current monolithic Linux HAL. DeviceKit includes the ability to enumerate system devices and send notifications when hardware is added or removed from the computer system.

DeviceKit
Developer(s)David Zeuthen
Initial release2008
Stable release
003 / March 2, 2009 (2009-03-02)[1]
Operating systemLinux
TypeHAL
LicenseGPL[2]
Websitefreedesktop.org/wiki/Software/DeviceKit

In May 2008, HAL developer David Zeuthen announced his intention to deprecate HAL, mainly because of its complexity and redundancy with other libraries in the Linux environment.[3] The only missing part in those libraries would be a centralized service to enumerate existing devices, signal adding/removal of devices and merging and classifying available hardware information in one point. DeviceKit is the new library providing those services, while the hardware is supposed to be accessed through other libraries instead of HAL or DeviceKit.

The first distribution to include DeviceKit was Fedora 11.[4] Ubuntu 9.10 replaced some of the old HAL features with DeviceKit and functionality from udev.[5]

On 1 December 2009, it was announced that DeviceKit-disks was renamed to udisks and that a similar rename would happen for DeviceKit-power.[6]

Future

According to DeviceKit devel mailing list, DeviceKit is getting merged with udev-extra and the existing DeviceKit programs such as DeviceKit-disks and DeviceKit-power will be switched over to use libudev.[6][7]

See also

References
  1. David Zeuthen (2009-03-02). "DeviceKit 003 released".
  2. "Appendix A. License". DeviceKit Reference Manual. Archived from the original on 2011-08-17. Retrieved 2017-01-15.
  3. David Zeuthen (2008-05-07). "Update on DeviceKit". Retrieved 2017-01-15.
  4. "Features/DeviceKit". Fedora Project. 2010-03-29. Retrieved 2017-01-15.
  5. "TechnicalOverview: hal deprecation". ubuntu.com. 2009-10-28. Retrieved 2017-01-15.
  6. David Zeuthen (2009-12-01). "DeviceKit-disks renamed to udisks". Retrieved 2017-01-15.
  7. Kay Sievers (2009-04-26). "udev rules files". Retrieved 2017-01-15.
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