Re: [gentoo-user] Re: udev (viable) alternatives ?

[Walter Dnes]

On Tue, Nov 11, 2014 at 07:18:30AM -0500, Rich Freeman wrote
> On Tue, Nov 11, 2014 at 12:20 AM, Walter Dnes <waltdnes@××××××××.org> wrote:
> >
> >   What worries me is that Lennart has been able to get modifications
> > done to the kernel, e.g. kdbus.  I know this'll sound paranoid, but how
> > long before he pushes a patch that requires systemd to run the linux
> > kernel?
>
> Apologies if this comes across a bit agro, but:
>
> 1.  kdbus isn't in the kernel (though that seems likely to happen at some point)
> 2.  it does sound paranoid
> 3.  if he pushes a patch that requires systemd I'd be shocked if Linus merged it
>
> Can you find one example of any situation where the linux kernel has
> ever required any specific implementation of anything in userspace as
> a matter of policy in its 23 year history?  I'm sure you could find
> some examples of cases where there just happened to be one de-facto
> implementation of something, but even that might be tough with all the
> diversity in the linux world.

  It might not be an official official requirement, but if the upstream
gets rolled into systemd, then we depend on the "goodwill" of systemd
devs not to go and break anybody else's userspace implementation.
Lennart and "goodwill" do not belong in the same sentence.  How's
systemd-shim working out for Debian???  I'm old enough to remember the
OS/2-versus-Windows wars.  At one point, IBM had Windows 3.1 running
inside of OS/2.  Then Microsoft issued "a minor update" (Windows 3.11)
and it no longer ran inside OS/2.  It took a while for IBM to get
Windows 3.11 running inside OS/2.  That's the kind of hostility that
non-Lennart userspace software faces.
 
> Linus himself has articulated some of the reasons why kdbus is likely
> to get merged.  It fills in a gap in Linux as compared to many
> competing operating systems, and it is logical to implement at the
> kernel level.  That is generally the criteria for getting stuff into
> the kernel, and is basically good software design.  The linux kernel
> is all about stable userspace ABIs - if there is only one
> implementation of something it is probably because nobody was bothered
> enough to write another.

  We Gentoo folks got our wakeup call ( literally
http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/systemd-devel/2014-May/019657.html )
from the guy who signs himself as "Lennart Poettering, Red Hat"
(nuff said).

  I don't know how long udev will run standalone without systemd.  My
desktop PC is running mdev.  See https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Mdev and
https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Mdev/Automount_USB

  eudev is also an option.  Hopefully, device management doesn't get
forced into systemd.

-- 
Walter Dnes <waltdnes@××××××××.org>
I don't run "desktop environments"; I run useful applications