[libhid-discuss] Does libhid require a driver installation on windows?

[Gabriel Rossetti]

Hello,

I would like to use the HID interface so that I do not have to write a 
driver to control my USB device. I found libhid and it looks interesting 
as it is cross platform. I see that it uses libusb, and the last time I 
had used libusb I had to install a driver on windows. I read on the 
libhid mailing list that libusb-win32 was going to use the native 
windows HID driver in it's future releases, which would require no 
driver installation:

On 4/11/07, Stephan Meyer wrote:
>/ > On 4/10/07, Xiaofan wrote:
/>/ > The thing is that you need to uninstall the kernel HID driver and
/>/ > use the libusb-win32 device driver for this kind of HID device. This
/>/ > significantly reduces the usability of libusb-win32 for HID device
/>/ > under Windows. Yet many USB device disguise them as HID device
/>/ > just to avoid writing a device driver.
/>/ >
/>/ > Just wondering if it is possible to use an alternative backend
/>/ > (Windows HID apli) and make libusb a wrapper on top of it.
/>/ > I understand then it should perhaps be called libhid-win32 then.
/>/
/>/ This sounds like a great idea! I'll add a native HID backend to the
/>/ next version of the DLL. It should be possible to implement most of
/>/ libusb's features on top of Windows' hid.dll such as open, close,
/>/ interrupt-read/write and basic control messages. The rest can be
/>/ emulated/simulated.
/>

(http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/libhid-discuss/2007-April/000136.html)

I searched both libhid's and libusb's websites and I found nothing 
concerning this, does anyone know what the current status is? Does a 
driver have to be installed to use libhid on windows? Also, what is the 
difference/advantage with using libhid in comparison with directly using 
libusb's hid support?

Thank you,
Gabriel