DeviceKit

DeviceKit is a software library and framework designed to provide a stable, high-level interface for discovering, querying, and controlling hardware devices from user applications. It aims to abstract platform-specific device APIs behind a consistent API, allowing applications to enumerate devices, monitor device changes, and access common device properties without depending on low-level driver details.

Overview: The core concept is to provide a DeviceKit Core library that exposes object representations of connected hardware such as disks, input devices, network interfaces, and multimedia peripherals. Applications can query properties such as vendor, model, serial number, and capacity, and subscribe to device add and remove events.

Architecture: DeviceKit typically consists of a core API and a set of backends for different platforms. Backends translate platform-specific device information into the unified DeviceKit model. Language bindings exist for C/C++, Python, and other languages to integrate with diverse applications.

Features: Enumeration and filtering, event-driven updates, and property-based querying are central capabilities. A security model governs access to devices, and backends can be extended to add support for new device families. Some implementations provide helper utilities for common tasks such as mounting or safely accessing media.

History and usage: DeviceKit emerged in the open-source ecosystem as an attempt to standardize device access, influencing related projects and components that manage hardware on desktop and embedded systems. Today, various implementations exist, with different goals and compatibility guarantees across platforms.

See also: udev, libudev, HAL.