Character I/O and UART (Universal Asynchronous Receiver Transmitter) DDK
A character (char) driver is a device driver that facilitates communication between user applications and devices (hardware or virtual) by handling data as a stream of characters serially. Unlike block drivers, which manage data in fixed-size blocks, char drivers operate on a byte-by-byte basis, making them ideal for devices such as serial ports and keyboards.
The io-char module provides a resource manager that handles client communication using hardware-specific functions implemented by the driver. This allows you to concentrate on the hardware interaction only.
The device driver is a standalone executable binary program that can be executed directly. During compilation, the driver is statically linked against the io-char library, libio-char.a.
For more information on character I/O, refer to the "Character I/O" section in the System Architecture guide.