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Diffstat (limited to 'kpilot/Documentation/HOWTO-CONDUIT.txt')
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diff --git a/kpilot/Documentation/HOWTO-CONDUIT.txt b/kpilot/Documentation/HOWTO-CONDUIT.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 7b6dccd0..00000000 --- a/kpilot/Documentation/HOWTO-CONDUIT.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,67 +0,0 @@ -One of the greatest assets of the Palm Pilot is its ability to -interconnect with other applications. KPilot supports this capabilty -through conduits. A conduit is a small shared library that is loaded by -the daemon during the hot sync. The conduit translates between the Palm -Pilot and the application you're syncing with. - -*** How it works - -KPilot is divided into three major components: the GUI, the -syncing daemon, and the conduits. The GUI part is actually irrelevant -for the operation of the daemon, although it _is_ required for the -configuration dialog (and possibly viewing databases). In theory -you could run the daemon on a box without even starting X, although -that is difficult (in particular, how would you do conflict resolution?). - -The daemon sits around and polls the configured device every second or -so (there are devices where this should be more often, I think). Once -data arrives (and the device exists, consider hotplug with USB), the -daemon enters sync mode, and constructs a queue of SyncActions to perform. -These vary from checking the Pilot's username to performing full backups -to -- whatever sync actions the conduits provide. This means that during -a sync the shared library containing a conduit is loaded, a factory -function is called to produce an Action, this action is run, and the -library unloaded. - -*** How the conduits work - -The conduits can actually be divided into two parts: the configuration -widget, and the Action. Both are produced by a factory function in -the shared library. The conduits have only one really interesting method -that they must override, and that is exec(). When this is called the -conduit is already set up with a socket descriptor and the conduit should -quickly do its thing. In particular, conduits can't just sleep(45) and -continue, since the connection with the Pilot will time out. - -*** Write your very own conduit - -Writing a conduit is actually rather easy. The conduit class -should inherit from ConduitAction and override the exec() method -(which actually comes from SyncAction). - - -*** Debugging things - -lib/options.h contains two defines that are really important for -debugging. These are - - // #define DEBUG (1) - // #define DEBUG_CERR (1) - -Uncommenting DEBUG will enable most of the debug information in -KPilot. Uncommenting DEBUG_CERR will make debug output go direct -to stderr (cerr) instead of through kdDebug. If in addition, you -pass --debug N (say, N=1 or N=4) to KPilot or the daemon when you -start them, they will print call traces (that's what FUNCTIONSETUP -does, which you will see at the beginning of every function). - -Another useful tool is kpilotTest, which is in kpilot/kpilot. It -is an uninstalled binary, which behaves like the daemon with a -log window and which will run a single conduit. Something like: - - kpilotTest -p /dev/ucom0 \ # port - -E conduit_knotes \ # .desktop file - -T # _really_ run - -use kpilotTest -L to list the installed conduits and their -desktop files (look at the "In ..." lines). |