Re: [gentoo-dev] News item for eudev deprecation

[Anthony G. Basile]

On 8/22/21 5:00 PM, Joshua Kinard wrote:
> On 8/22/2021 16:14, Anthony G. Basile wrote:
>> Hi everyone,
>>
>> Yes!  It is time to finally deprecate eudev!  sys-fs/udev now builds
>> under musl!  My original purpose for maintaining eudev was because
>> systemd + musl did not play well together when udev was absorbed into
>> the sytemd repo.  Now thanks to patches from openembedded, they do, and
>> my original reason for maintaining eudev is no longer valid.  So its
>> time to retire eudev.  It has served its purpose as a stop-gap.
>>
>> To me, this is a success for musl, and I would like to thank all the
>> developers who have taken musl seriously enough to make this happen :)
>>
>> I am willing to transfer the eudev repo to another organization, but I
>> will not maintain it anymore and Base System doesn't want to either.
>> Let me warn people, to maintain it correctly you MUST become familiar
>> with its internals and watch what systemd is doing upstream to keep up.
>>  This is not trivial.  I learned a lot from eudev, and it did save musl
>> on gentoo, but there was a period there when it was taking up almost all
>> of my time.  If you don't know what you're getting into, you don't want
>> to take on its maintenance.
>
> Which version of sys-fs/udev has the patches that allow it to replace eudev?
>  Do these patches have any chance of being accepted by upstream?
>

From udev-249-r2 and forward.  As far as upstream goes, I don't know.  I
tried in the early days talking to people, but the "fog of politics" was
too thick.  I can try again.

Having said that, I have assurances from people within Gentoo that they
will help maintain those patches.  I can also reach out to the
openembedded people to inform them of our interest in these patches.

I think musl has reached a sufficient weight that people beyond Gentoo
are interested in making sure it works with linux systems.  I was an
early adopter of it into Gentoo, like 10 years ago now.  At that time,
plugging it into a linux distro was squeezing a square peg into a round
whole.  This is no longer the case.

>
>> Title: eudev retirement on 2022-01-01
>> Author: Anthony G. Basile <blueness@g.o>
>> Posted: 2021-08-xx
>> Revision: 1
>> News-Item-Format: 2.0
>> Display-If-Installed: sys-fs/eudev
>>
>> sys-fs/udev is becoming the standard provider of udev on non-systemd
>> (e.g. OpenRC) systems. Users of systemd will continue to use the udev
>> services provided by the sys-apps/systemd package itself.
>
> Are there any concerns about upstream one day making udev and systemd
> inseparable again?

I can't address this.  There are two issues: 1) making sure there is a
device manager for musl.  2) making sure there is a device manager which
is independent of systemd.  My concern was the former, hence eudev.  If
one day I have to use systemd on a musl system, so be it.  If anyone is
concerned about the second issue, they are welcome to maintain eudev :P
 My life circumstances have changed and I don't have the time or will.

>
>
>> The transition should be uneventful in most cases, but please read this
>> item in full to understand some possible corner cases.
>>
>> eudev will be retired and removed from Gentoo on 2022-01-01. We will
>> start masking eudev on 2021-10-01 and give people 3 months to prepare
>> their transition. You should ensure that sys-fs/eudev is not in your
>> world file by running
>>
>>   emerge --deselect sys-fs/eudev
>>
>> in order for Portage to replace eudev with sys-fs/udev once the
>> package.mask is in place. We fully support udev on musl, whereas uclibc
>> will still have to rely on eudev before also being removed on 2022-01-01.
>>
>>   **WARNING**
>>
>> If you happen to have an INSTALL_MASK with a blanket "*systemd*" glob,
>> you will inevitably break your system. sys-fs/udev contains "systemd" in
>> some of its filenames, hence a blanket filter rule will likely lead to a
>> non-functional udev installation.
>
> Will an INSTALL_MASK of "/usr/lib/systemd /etc/systemd" cause any issues?

I have not tested, but I think so since "systemd-" is used as a prefix
for files installed by sys-fs/udev.

>
>
> Couple of typos below:
>
>>   Rationale
>>
>> The integration of udev into the systemd git repo introduced numerous
>> problems for none-glibc systems, such as musl and uclibc. Several
>
> s/none-glibc/non-glibc/
>
>> options were considered, and the one chosen was to fork and maintain
>> udev independant of the rest of systemd. This was meant as a stop-gap
>
> s/independant/independent/
>
>> solution until such time as the problems with systemd on musl had been
>> resolved. This is now the case with patches provided by openembedded,
>> and my original reason for maintaining eudev is no longer relevant.
>>
>> I am willing to transfer eudev to another umbrella organisation or Linux
>
> s/organisation/organization/
>
>> distribution that is willing to continue its maintenance, but
>> maintaining eudev cannot be done purely through proxy-maintaining and
>> requires an understanding of its internals. This is a steep learning
>> curve and must be an earnest effort. For this reason, the Base System
>
>> project has decided not to support euev as an option going forward.
>
> s/euev/eudev/
>
>

Thanks I will correct them.


-- 
Anthony G. Basile, Ph.D.
Gentoo Linux Developer [Hardened]
E-Mail    : blueness@g.o
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