Developing device drivers

Device drivers and other kernel software must be developed using the ``native'' SCO OpenServer compiler. Additional resources for driver development are provided in the Consolidated UnixWare/OpenServer Hardware Development Kit (HDK). The interfaces used to implement drivers are all present in the operating system, so the HDK does not need to be installed on a system in order to develop a driver, but the documentation, sample source code, and test suites are invaluable aids. All HDK packages are available for free download from the SCO HDK Web Page (http://www.sco.com/hdk). The documentation can be viewed at the UnixWare 7 documentation site, http://uw7doc.sco.com. The HDK CD-ROM can be ordered through the SCO Developer's Program.

Developers who have used older SCO Driver Development Documentation sets will notice that the manpage section names have changed to match the traditional UNIX manpage naming conventions. The logic of the new sections is that all D2* sections document driver entry point routines, all D3* sections document kernel functions, and all D4* sections document kernel structures. ODDI is used as a ``pseudo-version'' to represent the standard SCO OpenServer kernel-driver interface; OSDI is used as a pseudo-version to represent the SCO OpenServer SCSI interface. So, for example, man(D3oddi) documents the kernel functions that were previously documented in man(K), and man(D3osdi) documents the SCSI kernel functions that were previous documented in man(K_SCSI). See "Using the HDK documentation set" in the HDK documentation. man(D2oddi) documents driver entry points that did not have manual pages in earlier SCO driver documentation.