Hardware Database and Client - Dohickey

[Martin Owens]

>  Can I ask how this differs from the smolt project?

The big difference is that smolt is focused on collecting device data
from machines, it uses a combination of bios data for machine
identification and hal information for devices.

Compare this to dohickey which is focused on collecting hardware data
from people based on the detected hardware on machine, parsing all
available data from bios/hal/udev/i2c to quantify what hardware is
present, detecting what if any drivers are being used and providing
the user with all the available information about their hardware in
the client.

I wouldn't see a problem with allowing smolt access to the data and
having dohickey access the smolt data. But their scope and aims are
quite different.

>  Is there a benefit of having all of these clients available,
>  or should we try and coverge on one standard one?

There should be a standard, but if converging I would like that
standard to be a little more interactive and interesting than some of
the hardware clients and hardware databases have allowed for
themselves.

>  Do the upstreams have compatible aims and so be convinced
>  to share their efforts?

I think they've already talked about it, I know I've talked to many
people already in other client and server projects.

Best Regards, Martin Owens