What's the .driver-metadata file used for in Android Things?

Question

I've noticed in the Android Things contrib-drivers repo there's a few of these .driver-metadata files (one in each different driver folder). Does anyone know what they're for?

Example: https://github.com/androidthings/contrib-drivers/blob/master/rainbowhat/.driver-metadata

Thanks!

Answer 1

It could that Google use a tool to autogenerate the table of available drivers in their README of the repository.

You can see from this commit: https://github.com/androidthings/contrib-drivers/commit/194d09e8f4f0e0d5f8e0eef78ea26bdc8fa4fb5a

That each of the drivers created the type from the .driver-metadata file:

TYPE="RGB LED strip"

matches the column type in the README table:

| RGB LED strip |

Further if a .driver-metadata has another key,value of sample this is also in the table (and if it doesn't then there is no sample link).

This would mean (Google's side) if a driver was added/updated you would get automatic updates elsewhere.

This is just theoretical, you need a Googler to confirm :-)