Non-windows stuff to do

[Jeff Mitchell]

Shane King wrote:
> Jeff Mitchell wrote:
>   
>> Shane,
>>
>> Depending on how much Windows internals you really know, we could
>> *really* use a Solid backend on Windows.  At least the media devices and
>> hard disk portions of it...
>>
>> Of course, I don't know for sure that all of our libraries we use will
>> be available on Windows anyways, or how well they'll work, or how
>> they'll be packaged.  :-|
>>
>> --Jeff
>>     
>
> As far as I can tell, that would basically involve porting HAL to 
> Windows. Sounds like fun ... :p
>   
No, no, not at all.  Solid is designed for different backends.  Although
the format of the hardware properties available to developers follows a
HAL model, that's because no one from Windows or Mac camps were around
to help its design.

I believe on Windows this would basically involve a Solid<->WMI layer. 
So Solid would get device information from WMI (which I believe is where
one can get device info from on Windows :-)  ).

> The libraries are going to be an issue, anything that works with 
> hardware is going to be a complete pain to port. :
I think libmtp, libnjb, and libgpod all already work on Windows, which
is a large portion of devices.  Generic devices are the other large
chunk, and that just requires ripping any platform-specific code out of
the device (I doubt there's much if any) and replacing with i.e. Qt
equivalents.

--Jeff