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[RFC] Getting rid of devfs in D-I



During Debconf Jérémy Bobbio (Lunar) and I had a look at what is needed to 
get rid of the devfs device names in the installer. It turned out that 
this is actually very little, mostly thanks to all the work already done 
by Colin.
The result can be found on:
http://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/RemoveDevFS

We have successfully run test installs with both newt and gtk frontends 
for i386; other architectures are currently untested.

At a D-I team meeting during DebConf we decided that it makes sense to 
make the switch as soon as possible with the following plan:

1) Upload a fixed rootskel.
2) Submit patche for udev with necessary changes (see wiki page).
3) As soon as udev has been uploaded, upload busybox with devfs support
   disabled.

As there will probably be some time before an arch has both the new udev 
and busybox, daily builds may be broken for a few days.

4) Get all porters to test the installer
   As not all architectures have been explicitly tested, there may be
   some cases where regular device names are not fully supported yet.
   According to Colin, everything should just work though.

5) After some period to make sure there really are no unexpected
   regressions, start cleaning up all code that uses devfs device names.
   This can happen gradually; cleaned up versions should be tested
   before they are uploaded.

Comments welcome.

Cheers,
FJP

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