Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Beta test Gentoo with mdev instead of udev; version 3

["Canek Peláez Valdés" <caneko@gmail.com>]

On Wed, Jan 4, 2012 at 6:35 AM, Pandu Poluan <pandu@poluan.info> wrote:
>
> On Jan 4, 2012 6:19 AM, "Dale" <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Neil Bothwick wrote:
>>>
>>> On Tue, 3 Jan 2012 15:31:20 +0100, Nicolas Sebrecht wrote:
>>>
>>>> I know. It's the "I want to get the rid of initramfs" thing that looks
>>>> crazy to me.
>>>
>>> No one is saying they want to get rid of the initramfs, because they are
>>> not using one. What people object to is being forced to start using one.
>>>
>>>
>>
>> You got that right.  I have not used one since I started using Gentoo.
>>  Now, I may very well have to start.  I hope mdev gets to a point where it
>> works really well on desktop systems.
>>
>
> You were there in the thread linked by Walt, udev is just one of several
> packages maintained by RH people that *demands* /usr to be mounted during
> boot.
>
> And the RH devels insistence to deprecate /bin, /sbin, /usr/sbin...
>
> I'm getting depressed. One battle might be won (mdev vs udev), but there's
> still a war against the RH braindeadness...

I'm sorry to tell you this, but (as admirable as it could be), the
mdev hack to use it instead of udev is not a "victory". We are not at
war, in the first place; and in the second place, the mdev hack would
be used by a handful of guys bent on refusing a change that, like it
or not, would in the end come. Like Gentoo on FreeBSD, it would be a
nice hack, maybe even worthy of applause, but in the end irrelevant: a
toy. A cute, entertaining (and, in a few cases, useful) toy. But a toy
nonetheless.

The heavy development will continue to happen in udev, and the devices
that will dominate in the future (touchscreens, bluetooth input and
audio devices, hardware that has a highly dynamic change rate) will
only be supported by udev. The mdev hack will be useful maybe to only
some guys, and even then udev would be able to do the same (and more).

The use of an initramfs (or, alternatively, having /usr in the same
partition as /), and maybe the move of /bin to /usr/bin and /lib to
/usr/lib will be made, and in the future most of the interesting
software will simply assume that this is how a system works. Maybe we
will even stop to use the ridiculous short directory names from the
stone age, and we will start using sensible names:

/usr -> /System
/etc -> /Config
/var -> /Variable

I feel a deep respect for the people working on making mdev a
"replacement" of udev; it is not an easy task (even if it only works
for a really small subset of the use cases udev covers), and something
that I certainly would never do. But their hack (as beautiful as it
may be) will never be used by the majority of Linux users, and
probably not even by the majority of Gentoo users (if my
interpretation of the discussion on gentoo-dev is correct). And with
the pass of time it will be harder and harder to keep the hack working
with new hardware, new software, and new use cases.

But, hey, this is FOSS; you guys go nuts hacking in whatever feature
(or anti-feature) you like. As in the case of this mdev hack, it may
even be included in the Gentoo ebuilds. Just don't expect it to be
supported forever, don't expect it to support general-purpose setups,
and certainly don't call it "a victory". It's just the same history as
always: the people writing the code are the ones calling the shots.

Regards.
-- 
Canek Peláez Valdés
Posgrado en Ciencia e Ingeniería de la Computación
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México