On Mon, 22 Aug 2016 08:08:05 +1200
Daniel Reurich <daniel@???> wrote:

> > I've been at work for a week or so and today I looked at the DNG
> > list for the latest activities around vdev, but there has almost
> > been no activity on vdev as far as I can see. OTOH, last week I
> > tested eudev on a separate partition and that seems to work quite
> > well.
>
> You are mistaken, there has been lots of activity around vdev and
> making it installable.

I still encounter problems. When running a kernel without initramfs one
or another way vdev refuses to start because /var/log/vdev is not
writable. The only way to make it start is to use /dev/null as logfile
and restart it in rc.local.

> > I think it might be a good idea to leave vdev for what it is and
> > to switch to eudev. It is moreorless maintained (the latest change
> > is two weeks ago) and it works well. We should not reinvent the
> > wheel IMHO. And as there has been no response from the original
> > vdev author, I think it's better to package eudev for Devuan and to
> > make it available for Jessie and Ascii. The latest version is 3.2.
>
> Well quite frankly you don't get to make that call. Eudev is just a
> hack that from what I gather is isolating the systemd-udev changes and
> bringing them in to eudev. IMHO that is less sustainable then vdev
> because it relies on developers from systemd to play nice with udev
> and not deprecate features that don't serve systemd's needs. At the
> end of the day, I consider eudev as at best marginally better the
> eudev, but still far to closely coupled with systemd to be useful in
> the medium to long term.

That is some or other form of FUD. I hear these "it's too
dependent of systemd" arguments quite often here, but I don't think the
Gentoo folks would have used eudev if they were fearing the same. Devuan
is 99% Debian, that is even more a big threat if you consider the
systemd imperialisation.

> With regards to vdev, I'm sure if Jude didn't come back, others would
> pick up his work and progress it, as is happening now around packaging
> it. I think it rather disingenuous of you to imply it's a dead
> project whilst claiming that eudev, the re-animated zombie of
> systemd-udev as a better and only option. It's not better, and it's
> not the only option either.

No, but I fear vdev is stillborn. It's an orphaned project for the
moment. Don't get me wrong, I'd rather run vdev than another device
manager. The thing is: we may be able package it and to run it in
Jessie (as we tried last week), but will vdev still work in a year or so
if there's no development of vdev itself?

> Whilst I respect the work to package eudev and having it as an option
> in Devuan, I will personally very loudly push back on any attempt to
> derail alternatives such as vdev - unless those alternative are
> demonstrably built on the same flawed design principles as systemd.

I agree, but unfortunately nobody has the time and the skills to pick up
vdev and to continue its development. I have neither the time, nor the
skills unfortunately, otherwise I would certainly have participated in
the project. For the moment Devuan is still equipped with udev-systemd,
so Devuan is very very dependent on the systemd guys. Just something
nobody wants here.

And with "freedom of choice" in mind: indeed, it would be nice if eudev
would be available anyway, whether vdev will be continued or not.

R.

--
richard lucassen
http://contact.xaq.nl/