Created pull requests #477 and #269

Documentation commit here: GitHub fmertz/vyos-documentation/commits/system-display

Update: After hooking up an actual EZIO device to my VM and working the code back and forth, I seem to have settled on this design:

FWIW, this integration package is coming along nicely. I was able to create the XML CLI. The python code is kept to a minimum by passing a dictionary of the Config to the template engine "render". At this point, I can generate the proper LCDd.conf and lcdproc.conf based on the CLI. I now need to work on start/stop/restart as well as (basic) config validation. I have nothing for lcdexec/menu this far.

OK, another approach question.

At this point, i could use a couple of wise words for the development process.

OK, question on the approach. Looking at LCDd.conf (check the link above), there are a few server options, but TONS of individual driver options. Doing some sort of complete support in VYOS would be fairly straightforward, but would lead to a massive XML file. The lcdproc project has been around a while, so there are many different devices that are supported, most possibly somewhat historic or even one-off. We can (artificially) categorize them in 2 groups:

Overview of the effort:

Virtualization would work fine. The daemon/server LCDd is just code, and can be configured to run a nCurses "driver". Some other drivers only do parallel port stuff so would do nothing in a virtual environment. Other drivers do serial port and I suppose the data stream could be monitored. The clients (lcdproc, lcdexec, etc) are just programs that push data to LCDd over TCP.