Given that little has been mentioned abot vdev lately, I thought to drop
this FYI to report were I am at on this.

Basically, my vdev packaging project reached it's first milestone some
two weeks ago, of being installable and usable on Devuan 1.0.0 beta.
That means, that if you have a Devuan 1.0.0 beta, you can install the
packages for using vdev, but, by including a handy script, you can
alternate between it and the original udev (with reboot in between).

Thus, it doesn't fully commit to using vdev by replacing udev.

I believe these packages will be included in "unstable" soonish. Until 
then you'll have to do manual download and install from
    https://git.devuan.org/ralph.ronnquist/vdev

Now I'm looking towards the next generation of vdev. The vdev software
is complete in terms of machinery, but incomplete in terms of dealing
with the full range of possible devices. In particular, it doesn't do
usb_modeswitch for modem dongles, and it doesn't know much about
scanners. About half of the udev deal with those.

To that end, I've been exploring the udev rule set in Devuan 1.0.0 beta.
There are nearly 2800 different rules, with many rules specific for
particular devices, and some rules spanning ranges of devices. However,
there are only a handful of different "actions" happening for them,
including both the installation into the /dev tree with appropriate mode
settings, and some initial device control.

I intend to "compile" that into vdev by separating out the
classification aspect, so as to install that directly into the hwdb
properties. Then I'll add the few additional vdev actions needed based
on those hwdb properties.

That should cater for most of the possible devices. The compilation work
will be done by scripting under manual guidance, simply because there
are too many variations in the udev rule authoring to allow a fully
automated process. (For some of them you really need to hold your breath
while processing them)

In practice, it'll mean to produce additional input files to the hwdb
generation, with additional properties for devices as identified by the
hwdb key.

Realistically I won't have this ready until late October. Until then,
all and any feedback on the current packages is appreciated.

Ralph.