Re: [gentoo-dev] last rites: sys-fs/eudev

[Alex Boag-Munroe <ninpo@qap.la>]

On Thu, 14 Sept 2023 at 15:17, Eddie Chapman <eddie@ehuk.net> wrote:
>
> Andrew Ammerlaan wrote:
> <snip>
> > If someone were to step up and say they are willing to spend their time
> > and effort maintaining eudev and fixing the open issues then sure we can
> > keep it, I never said otherwise. However this package has been
> > maintainer-needed for quite a long time now and no one has stepped up, at
> > some point someone has to pull the plug.
> <snip>
>
> I am willing to help with the maintenance of eudev and field bug reports,
> either by preferably assisting another or as sole maintainer if that ended
> up being the requirement (hopefully not as FWICT there is already one
> other person volunteered). I would have time enough to be fully commit to
> this from 1st October onwards.
>
> My understanding is that in it's current form it cannot remain because it
> does not support the new API features expected by libgudev. If someone
> were to object to keep it for that reason then I'd propose to keep it but
> marked as incompatible with <= whatever version of libgudev introduced new
> API support. In this worst case scenario anyone with eudev currently
> installed  would then have a choice of either uninstalling eudev, or
> uninstalling libgudev and any desktop depending libgudev.  Then at the
> very least all server installations who wish to keep eudev could continue
> doing so, which I think is a much better outcome than all current eudev
> users having the proverbial rug pulled from under them.

It's not really libgudev related, it just so happens that libgudev is the first
thing that's cropped up as using new features added to systemd[udev].

Additionally the current proposals to "provide" such support are just stubs
or fallback calls, introducing unpredictable/surprising behaviour for
anything calling that part of the udev API.

Which brings us back to the rationale of keeping a package in ::gentoo
that's identical in every way to some older outdated version of
systemd[udev] for the sole purpose of "it doesn't say systemd", now
with added surprises.

A maintainer would need to be willing to uphold the "provides
virtual/libudev, honest guv" as well as deliver on the promises it
makes when it tells pkgconf what version it is.  Not doing so is a
support and user headache later when more things use the new
tags interface and subtle or even not so subtle bugs creep in,
new bugs get opened on b.g.o as well as the added burden on
#gentoo IRC.

--
Ninpo