[gentoo-dev] Re: RFC: virtual/libudev

[Duncan]

Canek Peláez Valdés posted on Thu, 26 Jul 2012 17:08:35 -0500 as
excerpted:

> Just to clarify, udev/systemd never promised "to make the component
> parts buildable separately". They promised:
>
> "we will be supporting this for a long time since it is a necessity to
> make initrds (which lack systemd) work properly. Distributions not
> wishing to adopt systemd can build udev pretty much the same way as
> before, however should then use the systemd tarball instead of the udev
> tarball and package only what is necessary of the resulting build."
>
> Where "package only what is necessary" being the important part for
> Gentoo.
>
> http://lwn.net/Articles/490413/
>
> Certainly they don't care about source-based distributions like Gentoo,
> but they never promised "to make the component parts buildable
> separately".
>
> Anyway, I also support the virtual/udev, since it's the only way for us
> systemd users to not build udev twice.

Actually, they did.

1) It's no secret that gentoo is build-from-source.

2) It's no secret that gentoo is in the "distributions not wishing to 
adopt systemd" class, at this point at least.

3) Gentoo's not a tiny micro-distribution, nor one based on some other 
distribution.  Some may argue that gentoo and its ecosystem aren't Debian 
or Fedora-class, but it's certainly not too tiny to be considered a 
viable candidate for that "distributions not wishing..." class, which 
it's known to be in.

4) They promised, based on your quote: "can build udev pretty much the 
same way as before, however should then use the systemd tarball [...] and 
package only what is necessary."

5) Building the same as before does *NOT* include building systemd.

6) "Package", in the gentoo context, includes building, so ESPECIALLY 
given the promise to "build udev pretty much the same as before", they 
DID promise that udev would be buildable separately.

7) What they specifically did NOT promise, in fact, quite to the 
contrary, was that it would be TARBALLed separately, which isn't a huge 
deal for gentoo, which already has whole desktops (kde) splitting 
individual packages out of monolithic combined tarballs.

8) The only way around that is if they try to argue point #3, saying 
gentoo and its ecosystem is /indeed/ too small to be included in the 
definition of "distributions".

9) Otherwise, at very minimum, they're failing the "build udev pretty 
much the same as before" clause, if there's no provision within the 
tarball (such as separate make targets and source directories, with the 
systemd target not a dependency of udev target) to extract and build only 
udev, without building systemd as well.



Not that such promises hold much credibility anyway... see the kde 
promise (from Aaron S when he was president of KDE e.v. so as credible a 
spokesperson as it gets) continued kde3 support as long as there were 
users.  (AFAIK, at least gnome didn't make /that/ sort of promise in the 
leadup to gnome3.  And no, AS cannot be properly argued to have been 
referring to others, like debian with its slow release cycles, as he was 
president of kde ev, not president of debian, or of the trinity project, 
which AFAIK didn't even exist at the time, and didn't specify support 
from OTHERS, not kde, so he was clearly speaking for kde, not for other 
entities.)

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman