Announce: just another one udev fork

[consus]

Hello. I want to announce new udev fork (link). Not far ago we decided to make a standalone version, because of recent changes in project (udev <-> systemd integration) based on udev-182 and now we have backported all valuable patches from upstream udev's git (up to 10 august).

Main advantages (compared to mainstream) are:

• separate /usr works just fine
• we will not drop useful features like unix-socket support
• we will not try to integrate with any init system, so if you want to use sysV-init you can do it without any hacks

Ebuild and patches for udev-initscripts can be found at "Downloads" page.
If anyone else is interested in this project bugreports, patches and other help are appreciated.

[VinzC]

Sounds pretty interesting indeed. Just one question: how can we deal with packages that depend directly upon systemd? Is it possible to have an abstraction layer to those packages that would proxy systemd calls to the appropriate packages? I'm really curious.

[consus]

We are not planning to write such abstraction layer by ourselves, but if someone will send us patches that won't break anything -- why not?

[VinzC]

Sounds good anyway!

[Fitzcarraldo]

As I understand it, the Gentoo developers have committed to keeping OpenRC and not adopting systemd. If my understanding is correct, would it be better for the Gentoo developers to use this udev fork rather than the official udev which was merged into systemd in April?

[mv]

This is really the best news since sliced bread.
I was hoping for this since Lennart admitted that the originally claimed reasons for the merge were just marketing lies with the actual purpose to force users into systemd (which was of course not a surprising opening; only surprise was that Lennart admitted it in a sense.)
So far, I was able to dump systemd and all the *kit stuff from my systems, but I was afraid that udev could be the serious obstacle, because mdev is really only a poor man's replacement for udev, not really suitable for desktops.

for the Gentoo developers to use this udev fork rather than the official udev which was merged into systemd in April?

I hope that they will make at least a virtual: There were already discussed plans for a virtual, but rejected because with actually only one upstream (at that time) it made no sense. Probably now they should change their mind.
For marketing reasons, it appears a bit unfortunate to me that the fork keeps the same name as original udev (but maybe this is necessary due to the license?) - maybe at least something like udev-ng or udev-standalone might be allowed?

[grey_dot]

Sounds pretty interesting indeed. Just one question: how can we deal with packages that depend directly upon systemd? Is it possible to have an abstraction layer to those packages that would proxy systemd calls to the appropriate packages? I'm really curious.

As far as I know there are no packages depending on systemd except for those from the systemd framework (upstream udev, logind, journald, etc). Some of them might possibly be used without systemd running, though I doubt it.

For marketing reasons, it appears a bit unfortunate to me that the fork keeps the same name as original udev (but maybe this is necessary due to the license?) - maybe at least something like udev-ng or udev-standalone might be allowed?

Yeah, we already gave that a thought. I think udev-standalone would be nice.

[consus]

About naming: we are thinking about udev-standalone too, just haven't got any time to rename it -- there are a lot of commits between 182 and 189 and not all of them were good enough It gonna be fixed soon.

[asturm]

I'm all for it.

we should have a poll on the name. what about 'moodev'?

@mv: do you have a link?

[aidanjt]

As far as I know there are no packages depending on systemd except for those from the systemd framework (upstream udev, logind, journald, etc). Some of them might possibly be used without systemd running, though I doubt it.

That'll probably change as Poettering uses his Red Hat clout to contaminate other open source projects. All his crap has ruined Linux, though, and I'd see all his crap booted out of the ecosystem.

[Ant P.]

I had a name ready in the event something like this happened: µdev.

Good luck with the project, sounds like people like it already.

[Jaglover]

Like is understatement, try love.

[PaulBredbury]

bugreports

I'm running it now

Not exactly a huge issue - this is missing a space:

Code: Select all

./src/udevd.c:        print_kmsg("starting version" VERSION "\n");

[grey_dot]

Not exactly a huge issue - this is missing a space:

Code: Select all

./src/udevd.c:        print_kmsg("starting version" VERSION "\n");

Thanks, fixed now %)

[cach0rr0]

I was hoping for this since Lennart admitted that the originally claimed reasons for the merge were just marketing lies with the actual purpose to force users into systemd (which was of course not a surprising opening; only surprise was that Lennart admitted it in a sense.)

link?

That'll probably change as Poettering uses his Red Hat clout to contaminate other open source projects. All his crap has ruined Linux, though, and I'd see all his crap booted out of the ecosystem.

yep. ++ times a million

anecdotally, this disease has been so virulent and toxic I've gone back from a "modern" DE, to plain ole fluxbox. Doubt they'll be fucking that one up any time soon. I don't care how much of a pain it is, I'll go back to static /dev if I have to. That faildesktop/Gnome can hijack the entirety of linux is infuriating to the point it's completely killed any enthusiasm I might have had for contributing. I just use linux now, and no longer expect to enjoy myself doing so.

[asturm]

Apparently he said this:

(Yes, udev on non-systemd systems is in our eyes a dead end, in case you haven't noticed it yet. I am looking forward to the day when we can drop that support entirely.)

[grey_dot]

That'll probably change as Poettering uses his Red Hat clout to contaminate other open source projects. All his crap has ruined Linux, though, and I'd see all his crap booted out of the ecosystem.

Mister Poettering is not a disease, he's merely a painful symptom like reactive diarrhea or something. The disease itself started a long time ago, when people started using quite useful and powerful things outside of the area of their applicability. Take a look at Bluez spoiled with dbus as an example of this. But this is not the subject of this thread.

P.S. By the way, there had been even more retarted attempts to get everything FUBAR. Back those days when DBus was not started GNOME had been using ORBit (CORBA implementation), which was attempted to be ported inside the linux kernel. Luckily, that attempt failed.

[VinzC]

That faildesktop/Gnome can hijack the entirety of linux is infuriating to the point it's completely killed any enthusiasm I might have had for contributing. I just use linux now, and no longer expect to enjoy myself doing so.

I don't want to bother you but it's the exact opposite that should be done. If you can contribute to your favourite branch then you'd probably work at making that other side better and more attractive. Giving up before the unwanted is making it the only one rising. Maybe your contributions will greatly help, don't you think?

(Yes, udev on non-systemd systems is in our eyes a dead end, in case you haven't noticed it yet. I am looking forward to the day when we can drop that support entirely.)

I'd be glad to be explained in details and understand why it would be a dead end [on non-systemd systems]. Indeed. My opinion is udev is somewhat cluttered and that rules system looks like a horrible spaghetti mess (though I love pasta). But it just needs some cleansing or rework, that's it.

What also pisses me off somehow is Gnome stuff ruling the rest of the system packages. *That* I really don't like. In the end, what will mostly distinguish distributions is only their package manager. One systemd to rule them all... just as if there were only one way to boot a machine, run services and manage hardware devices.

[khayyam]

Ebuild and patches for udev-initscripts can be found at "Downloads" page. If anyone else is interested in this project bugreports, patches and other help are appreciated.

consus ...

here is a sys-fs/udev-init-scripts ebuild with the neccessary inclusions for the conf and init.d patches. Its untested as I have't as yet built 'udev-standalone', but the patches are applied, so it should work as expected.

udev-init-scripts-16.ebuild

Code: Select all

# Copyright 1999-2012 Gentoo Foundation
# Distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License v2
# $Header: $

EAPI=4

inherit eutils

if [ "${PV}" = "9999" ]; then
	EGIT_REPO_URI="git://git.overlays.gentoo.org/proj/udev-gentoo-scripts.git"
	inherit git-2
fi

DESCRIPTION="udev startup scripts for openrc"
HOMEPAGE="http://www.gentoo.org"

LICENSE="GPL-2"
SLOT="0"
IUSE=""

if [ "${PV}" != "9999" ]; then
	SRC_URI="mirror://gentoo/${P}.tar.bz2"
	KEYWORDS="~alpha ~amd64 ~arm ~hppa ~ia64 ~m68k ~mips ~ppc ~ppc64 ~s390 ~sh ~sparc ~x86"
fi

RESTRICT="test"

DEPEND=""
RDEPEND=">=sys-fs/udev-187
	sys-apps/openrc
	!<sys-fs/udev-186"

src_prepare() {
	epatch "${FILESDIR}"/udev-conf.diff || die "patch failed"
	epatch "${FILESDIR}"/udev-init.diff || die "patch failed"
}

pkg_postinst()
{
	# If we are building stages, add udev to the sysinit runlevel automatically.
	if use build
	then
		if [[ -x "${ROOT}"/etc/init.d/udev \
			&& -d "${ROOT}"/etc/runlevels/sysinit ]]
		then
			ln -s /etc/init.d/udev "${ROOT}"/etc/runlevels/sysinit/udev
		fi
	fi

	# migration to >=openrc-0.4
	if [[ -e "${ROOT}"/etc/runlevels/sysinit \
		&& ! -e "${ROOT}"/etc/runlevels/sysinit/udev ]]
	then
		ewarn
		ewarn "You need to add the udev init script to the runlevel sysinit,"
		ewarn "otherwise your system will not be able to boot"
		ewarn "after updating to >=openrc-0.4.0"
		ewarn "Run this to enable udev for >=openrc-0.4.0:"
		ewarn "\trc-update add udev sysinit"
		ewarn
	fi

	ewarn "The udev-postmount service has been removed because the reasons for"
	ewarn "its existance have been removed upstream."
	ewarn "Please remove it from your runlevels."
}

best ... khay

EDIT: for me the sys-fs/udev-9999 provided fails with automake: automake-1.11: cannot open < gtk-doc.make: No such file or directory. USE="-doc" is currently set.

[grey_dot]

EDIT: for me the sys-fs/udev-9999 provided fails with automake: automake-1.11: cannot open < gtk-doc.make: No such file or directory. USE="-doc" is currently set.

As for now, udev needs gtkdocize from gtk-doc to be run before autoconf/automake, so you have to install gtk-doc. We are working on this issue, and gtk-doc will be optional in the near future.

[khayyam]

As for now, udev needs gtkdocize from gtk-doc to be run before autoconf/automake, so you have to install gtk-doc. We are working on this issue, and gtk-doc will be optional in the near future.

grey_dot ...

OK, in which case I'll hold off until that time. I did take a quick look at sys-fs/udev-9999::gentoo which likewise has USE="doc", but I don't have the time right now to see what might be required to have it work without having the kitchen sink installed, seems they are just echoing 'EXTRA_DIST =' into ("${WORKDIR}/systemd-${PV}") docs/gtk-doc.make if USE="-doc" is set, and then running elibtoolize.

best ... khay

[McGruff]

we should have a poll on the name. what about 'moodev'?

"betterdev"

"udeviant"

[sitquietly]

we should have a poll on the name. what about 'moodev'?

"betterdev"

"udeviant"

udder (UDev DERivative) ?

I'm so glad to see support for a unix-style startup system and will be switching to udev-standalone, or udder, as soon as possible. systemd is infecting Archlinux, which brought me here to enjoy better engineering with openrc and udev. With a Debian 3.2 kernel compiled with real-time patches and without any initrd my Gentoo bootup takes about half the time of my mostly identical Archlinux system.

[Anon-E-moose]

Nothing to add at the moment as I'm at udev-171 and wasn't planning to upgrade to anything hooked into systemd.

Having said that, I'm glad to see someone step up and "scratch an itch".
This is how unix has worked all along. Kudos.

[GFCCAE6xF]

Very nice! I've been reading up on mdev and thinking about trying it out - I may just try this out soon instead

@sitquietly
If you are who I think you are, welcome, have you finally left the makeworld manipulation behind too?