Introduction to I/O Kit Device Driver Design Guidelines

To create and deploy an I/O Kit device driver requires a range of knowledge and skills, some of which seem only remotely connected to the business of writing driver code. For example, you need to package the driver for installation. You may need to localize text and images associated with the driver and display dialogs when user intervention is necessary. And unless the code you write is always perfect when first typed, you’ll need to debug your driver.

This document describes various tasks that driver writers commonly perform. It is intended as a kind of “sequel” to IOKit Fundamentals. Whereas that document is primarily conceptual in nature—describing such things as the I/O Kit architecture and families, event handling, and memory and power management—this document takes a more practical approach. It is a collection of sundry topics related to writing, debugging, testing, and deploying I/O Kit device drivers.

Who Should Read This Document?

If you are developing a device driver to run in OS X, you should read this document. Because this document assumes familiarity with basic I/O Kit concepts and terminology, it’s a good idea to read IOKit Fundamentals first. It also helps to be familiar with object-oriented programming in general, and C++ programming specifically.

If you need to develop an application that accesses a device, you should read instead Accessing Hardware From Applications for more information on various ways to do that. If this sounds like a good solution for you, be aware that Objective-C does not provide interfaces for I/O Kit or BSD APIs. However, because these are C APIs, you can call them from a Cocoa application.

Organization of This Document

I/O Kit Device Driver Design Guidelines has the following chapters:

• The libkern C++ Runtime

  Describes the libkern library’s runtime typing system and the role of the OSMetaClass in it. It also describes techniques for object creation and destruction, dynamic casting, object introspection, and binary compatibility.

• libkern Collection and Container Classes

  Describes what the libkern collection and container classes are and how to use them. It includes code samples showing how your driver can use these classes to configure itself during runtime.

• The IOService API

  Provides an overview of the methods and types defined in IOService, the base class for all I/O Kit drivers. It includes descriptions of the methods for driver matching, sending and receiving notifications, client and provider messaging, power management, memory mapping, and interrupt handling. This chapter is an indispensable resource for those developing their own I/O Kit families or familyless drivers.

• Making Hardware Accessible to Applications

  Starts by discussing issues related to the transfer of data between a driver and a user-space program and summarizing the various approaches for doing so. It then describes one of the approaches: Custom user clients. It gives an overview of user-client architecture and points out factors affecting the design of user clients. Finally, it describes how to implement both sides of a user client: The IOUserClient subclass in the kernel and the library in user space.

• Kernel-User Notification

  Describes how you can use the Kernel–User Notification Center to present users with localized dialogs (blocking and non-blocking), launch user-space executables (including specific preference panes of System Preferences), and load sophisticated and localized user interfaces from bundles.

• Displaying Localized Information About Drivers

  Summarizes the steps for internationalizing the bundles known as kernel extensions and describes how to access the localized resources in these bundles from user space.

• Debugging Drivers

  A collection of tips and techniques for debugging I/O Kit device drivers. It discusses (among other things) debugging drivers during the matching and loading stages, setting up for two-machine debugging, using the kernel debugging macros, logging techniques, and debugging panics and system hangs.

• Testing and Deploying Drivers

  Discusses strategies for driver testing and offers guidance on packaging and deploying device drivers.

• Developing a Device Driver to Run on an Intel-Based Macintosh

  Provides tips for developing an in-kernel device driver to run in either a PowerPC-based or Intel-based Macintosh computer.

• Document Revision History

  Lists changes to this document.

• Glossary

  Defines key terms used in this document.