I was reading through a blog post by a Linux kernel developer, talking about the problems and deficiencies of the Linux Desktop experience.... the comment stream of which was a quite ugly flame war (declared) by zealots.
The prime concern(that all seem to agree upon) is that some Hardware manufacturers refuse to release the specifications of their latest devices, making the process of making drivers painful and lengthy (often resorting to reverse engineering...like noveau), if at all possible.
I'm, by no stretch of my imagination, knowledgeable about the topic, but I once read the instructions of such a process( in the CHDK project, which initially has to find out the "functions" that a particular Canon Camera supports and their memory addresses, by taking memory dumps and looking for clues in it.) .
To my surprise, the process seemed quite mechanical.
So, my question; to those members who have a considerable amount of experience with Hardware and low level stuff, is :
Can this process be automated ?
For example, plug in some brand new device, and generate something like an api-documentation ...only on a much lower level...with a program in the kernel land ?