Introducing myself & a few questions

[John Jackson]

Hello all. My name is John Jackson and I'm looking to start doing
driver development on Reactos. I've worked as a C++ / C# programmer
for about 7 years, and I want to get back into more hard-core C
development. Driver writing appeals to me since it sounds like a real
challenge. I've never programmed drivers before, but I've been reading
up on it and looking at code. (Also, I don't mean any of my questions
or wordings in a negative way, I'm not entirely sure how to phrase
some of my questions)

I'd like to start by working on USB support. I've taken a couple
glances through svn, and I've got some questions.

1. Does the reactos build environment support Windows Driver Framework
or just the Windows Driver model?

2. I see under /drivers/usb there is an nt4compat folder. I understand
basic usb keyboard/mouse support comes from here, but it's not coded
using the new driver models introduced in xp. Is anyone currently
working on a "proper" usb implementation? I see there are several
stubs in /drviers/usb/ that just return true.

3. I assume the place to start with usb support is bus drivers? Do
usb1 and usb2 mean different bus drivers? (I've not read up much on
usb yet, I'm still trying to wrap my head around driver development)

I'll try to get on the irc channel either tomorrow or Sunday to say hi
in person, but I think this is a good start for conversation.

--John Jackson
--taladon(a)gmail.com

[Maya Posch]

Hi John,

WDM is supported for sure, not sure about WDF. Support for it may be 
still be somewhat iffy.

I have been working somewhat on a WDM (NT5-style) USB stack for a while 
now, while Fireball has been working on the NT4-style stack. If you want 
we could work on the WDM stack together :)

There's the central USB support (UHCI, OHCI, EHCI), classes for hubs, 
HID, storage devices, and so on.


Maya


John Jackson wrote:
>   Hello all. My name is John Jackson and I'm looking
> to start doing
>  driver development on Reactos. I've worked as a C++ / C# programmer
>  for about 7 years, and I want to get back into more hard-core C
>  development. Driver writing appeals to me since it sounds like a real
>  challenge. I've never programmed drivers before, but I've been reading
>  up on it and looking at code. (Also, I don't mean any of my questions
>  or wordings in a negative way, I'm not entirely sure how to phrase
>  some of my questions)
>  
>  I'd like to start by working on USB support. I've taken a couple
>  glances through svn, and I've got some questions.
>  
>  1. Does the reactos build environment support Windows Driver Framework
>  or just the Windows Driver model?
>  
>  2. I see under /drivers/usb there is an nt4compat folder. I understand
>  basic usb keyboard/mouse support comes from here, but it's not coded
>  using the new driver models introduced in xp. Is anyone currently
>  working on a "proper" usb implementation? I see there are several
>  stubs in /drviers/usb/ that just return true.
>  
>  3. I assume the place to start with usb support is bus drivers? Do
>  usb1 and usb2 mean different bus drivers? (I've not read up much on
>  usb yet, I'm still trying to wrap my head around driver development)
>  
>  I'll try to get on the irc channel either tomorrow or Sunday to say hi
>  in person, but I think this is a good start for conversation.
>  
>  --John Jackson
>  --taladon(a)gmail.com
>  
>  _______________________________________________
>  Ros-dev mailing list
>  Ros-dev(a)reactos.org
>  http://www.reactos.org/mailman/listinfo/ros-dev

[Aleksey Bragin]

Hi,
welcome!

In ReactOS we mostly use legacy and WDM drivers. WDF framework is  
absent in ReactOS (though drivers compiled with it may boot, I don't  
think anyone tested that though).

The current USB driver is done in a so-called NT4-style, which means  
it is a legacy driver, having monolithic structure - all parts, which  
should really be apart in a modern PnP way - e.g. usbport, usbhub,  
usbhid, etc - are all parts of one driver, and there is a special  
small "device manager" and "driver manager" inside it which help  
"load" (just initialize) the respective builtin driver.

I collected a few docs regarding Windows XP's implementation of a USB  
stack quite a while ago. Maya also says she has done some work in  
this direction - it would be good if she could share the results too.

As for general direction, of course the preferred way is to implement  
it Windows 2003 way. Start from scratch, use existing stubs, or just  
tear apart the existing nt4compat driver - converting it to a plug  
and play driver (thus remove a bunch of PCI bus scanning from it),  
creating a usb bus driver which would be able to load usb device  
drivers. That's up to you, I'll help with either of those.

Coding style for kernelmode code could be found in the wiki. Enjoy  
the process! :)


WBR,
Aleksey Bragin.


On Jul 31, 2009, at 3:45 PM, John Jackson wrote:

>   Hello all. My name is John Jackson and I'm looking
> to start doing
>  driver development on Reactos. I've worked as a C++ / C# programmer
>  for about 7 years, and I want to get back into more hard-core C
>  development. Driver writing appeals to me since it sounds like a real
>  challenge. I've never programmed drivers before, but I've been reading
>  up on it and looking at code. (Also, I don't mean any of my questions
>  or wordings in a negative way, I'm not entirely sure how to phrase
>  some of my questions)
>
>  I'd like to start by working on USB support. I've taken a couple
>  glances through svn, and I've got some questions.
>
>  1. Does the reactos build environment support Windows Driver Framework
>  or just the Windows Driver model?
>
>  2. I see under /drivers/usb there is an nt4compat folder. I understand
>  basic usb keyboard/mouse support comes from here, but it's not coded
>  using the new driver models introduced in xp. Is anyone currently
>  working on a "proper" usb implementation? I see there are several
>  stubs in /drviers/usb/ that just return true.
>
>  3. I assume the place to start with usb support is bus drivers? Do
>  usb1 and usb2 mean different bus drivers? (I've not read up much on
>  usb yet, I'm still trying to wrap my head around driver development)
>
>  I'll try to get on the irc channel either tomorrow or Sunday to say hi
>  in person, but I think this is a good start for conversation.
>
>  --John Jackson
>  --taladon(a)gmail.com
>
>  _______________________________________________
>  Ros-dev mailing list
>  Ros-dev(a)reactos.org
>  http://www.reactos.org/mailman/listinfo/ros-dev