[gentoo-dev] udev implementation

["C. Brewer" <cbrewer@stealthaccess.net>]

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 I tried out the 0.2 version of udev today, and I realize that its way rough 
so early in the development, but I must say I was disappointed with it's 
current implementation ( and the lousy attitude of the udev FAQ "if you don't 
like it stick with devfs" didn't help). Currently I have some small concerns 
about adopting this as a whole ( somewhere on down the line)-

1)The present package consists of a tarball with just about every device node 
you could make (excepting small things like sound, ppp, more than 4 ttyS*'s)
Is this going to be a standard, or will some form of intuitive /dev entries be 
imp'd? IIRC, the tarball is about 1.4k device nodes, and I think I need 100 
on the outside.

2) Since this won't automatically create these nodes ( unless a hotplug event 
occurs), or load the dependent modules, doesn't this seem like a step back to 
the old system, but with a name-mapping steroided hotplug?

3) Don't get me wrong..I'm not flaming the package,and I realize devfs is crap 
as well..but the score is devfsd( crap but makes nodes and loads mods on the 
fly) and udev (maps names and supposedly does stuff with hotplugging that 
hotplug never amounted to.( and is dev'd by the hotplug peeps?ironic)). All 
that aside, what is udev going to do for the desktop? I have devices I could 
swap(USB) but with most comps coming with like 6 usb ports, I cant see more 
than some pendrive swapping at user level. Yeah, I know theres peeps out 
there with 80 pendrives and 8 hot-swappable hdd's, but is this the majority 
of users? For the likely many of us who dont need to swap and have had the 
same hardware on the same nodes that dont ever change..what does udev bring 
to the table?

Forgive me if I've gone delusional.. I was just under the impression that udev 
was going to do everything that devfsd does now _and_ add name mapping, and 
apparently I was wrong. I'm just planning for the future since seeing the 
udev changes going into our init system.. we got no choice about the devfs 
and I feel it's going the same way for udev. I'm not trying to slight the 
obviously hard work that was put into it, but what about choice? to devfs or 
not to devfs? to udev or not to udev? Or is it merely choice with package 
selection, and not with the overall package that is Gentoo?

Criticism appreciated, discussion welcomed, craziness and flames- please pipe 
to /dev/null:)
-- 
Chuck Brewer
Registered Linux User #284015
Get my gpg public key at pgp.mit.edu!! Encrypted e-mail preferred.



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