Re: Really, about udev, not init sytsems

[John Paul Adrian Glaubitz <glaubitz@physik.fu-berlin.de>]

On Thu, Nov 29, 2012 at 03:21:02PM +0100, Wouter Verhelst wrote:
> > Well, systemd and udev are developed by the same developers. Both
> > daemons interact very closely and integration of the sources was the
> > natural consequence.
> 
> udev and pulseaudio are developed by the same developers. Both daemons
> interact very closely and integration of the sources was the natural
> consequence.
> 
> glibc and the kernel is developed by the same group of companies. Both
> interact very closely and integration of the sources was the natural
> consequence.
> 
> Internet explorer and Windows are developed by the same company. Both
> interact very closely and integration of the two was the natural
> consequence.
> 
> I'm not sure I agree with any of those arguments.

Ok, I should have added that both udev and systemd are also very
closely related. So there are certainly benefits of merging the code.

As I already mentioned somewhere else, FreeBSD has the same approach
with their kernel and the basic userland. Doesn't the FreeBSD source
even include some games?

> > Yes, it makes it more difficult to use udev with a different init
> > system, but again most people don't care
> [citation needed]

Well, it's obvious, isn't it? I mean, I am talking about the average
joe. I didn't hear anyone complain when Apple switched to launchd in
10.4 and I have really never ever people arguing about what init
daemon is the best until systemd came up. I can't get rid of the
impression that the rejection of systemd is solely based on technical
merits.

> > as long as the init system they have works reliable. And since udev is
> > Linux-only anyway, I don't see a problem merging it with a Linux-only
> > init system.
> 
> You're basing that statement on the premise that everyone agrees
> switching the init system to systemd is fine, and that therefore merging
> udev and systemd isn't a problem. This is false.
> 
> First, there are those among us who dislike systemd, for various
> reasons. The fact that this thread exists, should prove that.

Again, I am constantly asking here what these reasons might be and yet
people always come with strawman arguments. I mean, seriously we had
the discussion that systemd is a bad design because it uses the same
configuration file syntax as Windows ini files or XDG .desktop files,
adding the statement that these are too difficult to parse.

The only valid argument I have seen so far against systemd is the fact
that it doesn't support non-Linux kernels. But this is true for
upstart as well. Plus, there are already efforts to get a
systemd-unit-file-to-sysvinit converter running. So, the BSD and Hurd
fans are not completely left outside. There is other stuff in Debian
as well which won't work on these kernels after all (like udevd).
 
> Second, there are distributions (like Ubuntu) who don't seem to have any
> long- or near-term plans to move to systemd. Making them use systemd
> just so they can continue to use udev seems fairly problematic.

Well, but I would say Ubuntu is to be blamed here. As opposed to
upstart, systemd has many supporters and contributors in the industry
(Intel, ProFusion, SuSE, RedHat) while upstart is virtually only
actively developed by Canonical if am I not mistaken. Plus, you have
to sign a contributor's agreement with Canonical which leaves a bad
taste in my mouth. That shouldn't be the case with true free software,
should it?

> > If it's so important to be able to choose such a low-level component
> > as the init system, why aren't people demanding that you can choose
> > different kernel stacks of choice? For example OSS4 instead of ALSA or
> > the old Firewire stack instead of the new one?
> 
> Back when OSS was the only in-kernel option on Linux (2.4 and before,
> IIRC), ALSA was developed alongside the kernel. Eventually it got
> merged, as _an alternative_ inside the kernel. It's only fairly recent
> that OSS support was dropped -- even if that's happened at all, of which
> I'm not sure (and I don't care enough to check).

Yes, but ALSA was so quickly adopted that very shortly after no one
really cared about OSS anymore. I was rather surprised that it took so
long to be completely abandoned. It was virtually only there to
support sound cards which had no ALSA drivers yet, didn't it?

> If you're going to merge udev and systemd, then suddenly such choice
> becomes much more difficult. That's the problem here: that a technical
> choice, which may or may not be the best (I really don't care at this
> point) is forced upon people who don't care about those who disagree
> with them.

Sure, I don't disagree on this point. But again, don't you think it
makes sense to got into that direction when the adoption rate of a
certain software is high?

I mean, just look at the popcon numbers for systemd vs upstart:

> http://qa.debian.org/popcon-graph.php?packages=systemd
> http://qa.debian.org/popcon-graph.php?packages=upstart

> udev took quite some time to be accepted by the community too, but now
> it's probably fair to say that it has been. To try to couple that to
> systemd sounds like a bad form of systemd advocacy to me.

Yes, I agree it leaves a bad taste for sure. But again, I am not so
sure if we really need to be able to choose our init system. I mean,
do we have this discussion over mdev vs udev? Or even devfs?

> Oh well, we'll see what the future brings, I suppose.

This is actually the one and only thing where we all can agree on :).

Cheers,

Adrian

-- 
 .''`.  John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' :  Debian Developer - glaubitz@debian.org
`. `'   Freie Universitaet Berlin - glaubitz@physik.fu-berlin.de
  `-    GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546  0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913