Patch: control lirc mode from external program

[Jeff D. <je...@tc...>]

Hi,

I use LIRC to control my home automation PC which I have configured to 
use one remote to play music, control lights, play movies, navigate 
on-screen menu.  To accomplish all of this, I've mapped a few buttons on 
my remote to switch between modes ("Music" button switches the remote to 
music mode, "TV" button switches the remote to menu-entry mode) which 
makes it relatively easy to switch between the remote's different modes.

However, there are a few instances when having to press a button on the 
remote to switch modes is not sufficient, such as when I use the menu to 
navigate to a movie and press "select" again to run a script that begins 
playing the movie.  Because the "select" button is also used for 
selecting submenus in this mode I cannot use the standard "mode = 
mplayer" config setup with this button and instead must map a second 
button to switch the remote over to the "mplayer" mode.

To make things easier, I've created a patch that gives external programs 
the ability to modify lircrcd's mode.  This way I can run the new 
program "lirc_setmode" to explicitly set the mode for a given file.

Usage:  lirc_setmode <mode> [file]
example: lirc_setmode mplayer /etc/lirc/lircrc

I've added another program, "lirc_getmode" that will return the current 
mode of a file.

Usage: lirc_getmode [file]
example: lirc_getmode /etc/lirc/lircrc

I hope someone else finds this useful.

-- Jeff