RFC: Listening for devices being added - udev vs. X11

Martin Kelly martin at martingkelly.com
Tue Apr 15 05:38:10 CEST 2014


Hi,

I'm working on a patch to fix a longstanding frustration I've had with 
XFCE, which is that every time I unplug an external keyboard and then 
plug it in again, my keyboard repeat settings get lost. It is 100% 
reproducible and has a fairly simple explanation, which is that 
xfsettingsd does not listen for the device being added, so X11 sets the 
keyboard repeat rate instead. Thus my patch is for xfsettingsd to listen 
for keyboards being added and apply the keyboard settings when the event 
fires.

The question is: Should XFCE listen via udev or via xorg? Using udev is 
definitely cleaner and more future-proof, but xfsettingsd is already 
using many X11 libraries, so udev adds a new dependency. Especially 
since I am new to XFCE development, I wanted to get community feedback 
so I don't go down a path that will eventually be rejected.

Thanks,
Martin


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