[arch-general] Gentoo udev fork w/o systemd

[Dave Reisner]

I normally wouldn't respond to trolls on this list and really I'd rather
have seen this post be moderated straight to where it belongs -- /dev/null.
However....

On Mon, Nov 19, 2012 at 2:31 PM, Jérôme Bartand <moijerob at gmail.com> wrote:

> I want to bring to your attention that Gentoo is working on a udev fork
> called eudev that will
>
> - respect the Unix philosophy
>

Sorry, perhaps you could explain how current udev (udev, not systemd)
defies this, and why it's relevant for a small set of binaries and library
which only serve to handle uevents from the kernel. Please keep in mind
when writing your response that udev is still entirely useable without
systemd. No, Lennart's infamous post exclaiming how "standalone udev has no
future" is not an indication that it's going to break any time soon.


> - be POSIX-compliant and get rid of glibcisms
>

Why does this matter? Do you have any concept of what POSIX defines and
doesn't define? udev is a piece of software which is intimately involved
with the Linux kernel, and necessarily must be, to accomplish its goals.
Furthermore, the "glibcisms" used by udev has nearly wholly been adopted by
the other popular libcs -- eglibc, uclibc, and musl.


> - have no unnecessary dependencies (systemd, kmod)
>

You seem to have this backwards. systemd relies on udev, not vice versa.
kmod is a real thing which solves a real problem. Going back to
module-init-tools causes unsolvable regressions which were addressed by the
implementation of a library which userspace has been lacking for years, and
which was developed after much talk at the Linux Plumbers conference a year
ago. Jon Masters and Rusty Russel both strongly support the implementation
of libkmod, as do other people who are well known in low level userspace
and kernel space as well. Feel free to point out why this is a bad idea.


> - support separate /usr
>

Please explain why udev makes this a non-reality. A properly working
separate /usr without an initramfs is a unicorn. It's been broken long
before udev did whatever you think it did to break it. It's hopelessly
pointless to do, and if you're still bent on it, the modern initramfs
implementations support mounting a separate /usr from early userspace, and
cleanly unmounting it on shutdown. Do you have any concept of what the
problems associated with this are? You can't possibly, or else you wouldn't
be parroting this tripe.


>
> http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.project/2262


Maybe you should have pointed out this thread:

http://gentoo.2317880.n4.nabble.com/udev-ng-Was-Summary-Council-meeting-Tuesday-13-November-2012-td252237.html

Which really only points out how flawed their non-existant plan is, and how
much resistance they're getting to the idea. I can only assume you haven't
actually read it.


> with the goal to make it default for Gentoo in the future, along with
> OpenRC. I know from past discussions on this mailing list that not
> everybody in the Arch community is happy with systemd. They are looking for
> contributors and this is an opportunity for cross-community collaboration.
>

Feel free to join them. Your sinking ship awaits you.