... I might as well try to work out what it does and see if I can re-write it to libusb 1.0 instead of the now deprecated libusb 0.1
Not sure if it applies to your usage case, but there is a compatibility libusb library at:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/libusb/files/libusb-compat-0.1/libusb-compat-0.1.4/libusb-compat-0.1.4.tar.bz2
It allows access to libusb-1.0 for code that has been written for the deprecated libusb-0.1.
I used it with libusb-1.0.9 for the purpose of building Device::USB on Windows - Device::USB being another module that has not been updated for libusb-1.0.
I now see that there are much more recent versions than 1.0.9 available from
http://sourceforge.net/projects/libusb/files/libusb-1.0/
I (sisyphus) mentioned this in a post to
this bug report. Have a quick read of that post and see if you think this approach might be of use to you.
Cheers,
Rob