Nut upsdev - Jun 2007 - Reserve '_' in driver names?

I'm trying to see if we can make upsd autodetect the driver sockets from
the STATEPATH. This works quite well and uses surprisingly little code
(much less than parsing the 'ups.conf' file). However, since I can no
longer read the name from the 'ups.conf' file, I need to extract this
from the name of the socket. We might simply strip the drivername from
the socket name again, but I really don't want to do that, since it
won't allow us to define our own names (for autodetected UPSes) anymore.

Unfortunately, we're clean out of potential separation characters.
Unless I use a double '_' or '-' (the '.' is not an
option), we're
stuck. Therefor I want to propose to reserve the '_' character in driver
names, so that this is available again for this purpose.

Currently, three drivers use a '_' in their names:

	bcmxcp_usb
	megatec_usb
	tripplite_usb

Since these are fairly recent additions (from the last two years), would
it be OK to rename them to

	bcmxcp-usb
	megatec-usb
	tripplite-usb

Or would this cause too much grief downstream? The alternative is to use
a double '_' as separator character, but personally, I thinks this looks
bug__ugly. :-)

Best regards, Arjen

Instead of modifying upsd why not ship a default ups.conf that contains 
a default driver named ['default' | 'automatic' |
'auto']?

USB and other devices that can be autodetected/started could use the 
default name included in ups.conf.

On Thu, Jun 07, 2007 at 09:11:09PM +0200, Arjen de Korte
wrote:
> I'm trying to see if we can make upsd autodetect the driver sockets
from
> the STATEPATH. This works quite well and uses surprisingly little code
> (much less than parsing the 'ups.conf' file). However, since I can
no
> longer read the name from the 'ups.conf' file, I need to extract
this
> from the name of the socket. We might simply strip the drivername from
> the socket name again, but I really don't want to do that, since it
> won't allow us to define our own names (for autodetected UPSes)
anymore.
> 
> Unfortunately, we're clean out of potential separation characters.
> Unless I use a double '_' or '-' (the '.' is not an
option), we're
> stuck. Therefor I want to propose to reserve the '_' character in
driver
> names, so that this is available again for this purpose.
> 
> Currently, three drivers use a '_' in their names:
> 
> 	bcmxcp_usb
> 	megatec_usb
> 	tripplite_usb
> 
> Since these are fairly recent additions (from the last two years), would
> it be OK to rename them to
> 
> 	bcmxcp-usb
> 	megatec-usb
> 	tripplite-usb
> 
> Or would this cause too much grief downstream? The alternative is to use
> a double '_' as separator character, but personally, I thinks this
looks
> bug__ugly. :-)
> 
> Best regards, Arjen

[ renaming drivers ]
> Or would this cause too much grief downstream? The alternative is to use
> a double '_' as separator character, but personally, I thinks this
looks
> bug__ugly. :-)
Never mind this message. The driver name is irrelevant for the socket
name. One can query which driver is used from the UPS data structures, so
we can also use 'user-' and 'auto-' as prefixes, to make a
distinction
between user- and automatically configured UPS'es. Therefor, I withdraw
this proposal, it has no merit.

Since hot(un)pluggable UPS'es won't have an 'ups.conf' entry, I
will make
the option to start a driver without an entry there available again in the
trunk, once the server picks up the drivers to connect to from the
STATEPATH, rather than from 'ups.conf'.

Best regards, Arjen