Re: [PATCHv2 0/7] Support inhibiting input devices

[Hans de Goede <hdegoede@redhat.com>]

Hi Andrezj,

On 5/15/20 6:49 PM, Andrzej Pietrasiewicz wrote:
> Userspace might want to implement a policy to temporarily disregard input
> from certain devices, including not treating them as wakeup sources.
> 
> An example use case is a laptop, whose keyboard can be folded under the
> screen to create tablet-like experience. The user then must hold the laptop
> in such a way that it is difficult to avoid pressing the keyboard keys. It
> is therefore desirable to temporarily disregard input from the keyboard,
> until it is folded back. This obviously is a policy which should be kept
> out of the kernel, but the kernel must provide suitable means to implement
> such a policy.

Actually libinput already binds together (inside libinput) SW_TABLET_MODE
generating evdev nodes and e.g. internal keyboards on devices with 360°
hinges for this reason. libinput simply closes the /dev/input/event#
node when folded and re-opens it when the keyboard should become active
again. Thus not only suppresses events but allows e.g. touchpads to
enter runtime suspend mode which saves power. Typically closing the
/dev/input/event# node will also disable the device as wakeup source.

So I wonder what this series actually adds for functionality for
userspace which can not already be achieved this way?

I also noticed that you keep the device open (do not call the
input_device's close callback) when inhibited and just throw away
any events generated. This seems inefficient and may lead to
the internal state getting out of sync. What if a key is pressed
while inhibited and then the device is uninhibited while the key
is still pressed?  Now the press event is lost and userspace
querying the current state will see the pressed key as being
released.

On top of this you add special inhibit and uninhibit callbacks
and implement those for just a few devices. How do these differ
from just closing the device and later opening it again ?

Also using a sysfs property for this is very weird given that the
rest of the evdev interface is using ioctls for everything...

So all in all I see a lot of question marks here and I think we
need to have a detailed discussion about what use-cases this
series tries to enable before moving forward with this.

Regards,

Hans