I think this really should be in hoary since it makes USB troubleshooting a lot easier

[Matt Zimmerman]

On Tue, Feb 01, 2005 at 01:53:39AM +0100, Kristof Vansant wrote:

> David Brownell released version 0.70 of the usbutils package. He
> explains, "the 'usbutils' package is most useful for the 'lsusb'
> utility, which can provide considerable detail about the USB devices
> connected to your Linux system. (It's like 'pciutils' is for PCI.) When
> making bug reports, or otherwise troubleshooting, 'lsusb -v' output is
> very useful; often more so than /proc/bus/usb/devices output."
> 
> David goes on to explain that the last release of the usbutils package
> was version 0.11 in August of 2002. Since that time, many bug fixes and
> various other patches have been merged. Gained in this version is
> support for USB 2.0 features, as well as an understanding of many more
> types of descriptors. He adds, "This version uses the system's version
> of 'libusb', rather than its own private copy. That involved some API
> changes. It also accounted for the only loss of functionality: lsusb
> doesn't currently list the language strings supported by the device.
> Many devices don't seem to bother with anything beyond English.

I would be a bit uncomfortable with bringing this new version into Hoary at
the present time, as we are very close to feature freeze and need to begin
stabilization soon.  hal and hotplug (both critical infrastructure) seem to
tie into usbutils, though the hotplug integration may only be for 2.4
kernels, I haven't looked.

I would be open to input from David about this, however, based on our
published release schedule:

http://www.ubuntu.com/wiki/HoaryReleaseSchedule

If it fixes many bugs, and the risk is low, we can update to this version,
but if we are to do so, it must be soon, to ensure sufficient testing.

-- 
 - mdz