Re: [gentoo-user] Re: hal - what's the benefit of using it

[Alan McKinnon]

Please don't top post on this list. It's considered rude.

You are talking about HAL, an abstract concept.
The OP is talking about hal, a definite package - sys-apps/hal. Recent X.org 
uses it to autoconfigure input devices on startup


On Wednesday 04 February 2009 18:34:28 Hazen Valliant-Saunders wrote:
> Um, you are using the HAL weather you want to or not, it's not really an
> option!
>
> The HARDWARE ABSTRACTION LAYER with respect to good ol linux happens
> to be your kernel and it's drivers.
>
> The bare metal registers within which all those bits are moved is
> called the hardware; all those configuration files and source you
> compile is considered the software, anything that creates the
> transparency between the two is refereed to as the HAL (In windows 98
> it was a single DLL file), in Linux it's the source code and binaries
> of the kernel and drivers, all modern computers regardless of low
> level arch have a HAL.
>
> Regards,
> Hazen.
>
> On Wed, Feb 4, 2009 at 11:17 AM, James <wireless@×××××××××××.com> wrote:
> > Helmut Jarausch <jarausch <at> igpm.rwth-aachen.de> writes:
> >> having had some problems with recent xorg version my question is
> >> what are the benefits (if any) of building packages with the 'hal'
> >> use flag (i.e. adding 'hal' to US='...' in /etc/make.conf)
> >
> > This link is short and reasonable.
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAL_(software)
> >
> >
> > Hardware Abstraction Layer is a buzz term that means
> > many different things to many different hardware
> > designers  who need software to make their designs
> > complete.
> >
> >
> > hth,
> >
> > James



-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com