On 07/26/2018 02:59 AM, Andrew Savchenko wrote:
Hi!
On Thu, 19 Jul 2018 16:51:17 -0500 Ben Kohler wrote:
I'd like to propose adding USE=udev to our linux profiles (in
profiles/default/linux/make.defaults probably). This flag is already
enabled on desktop profiles but it also affects quite a few packages
used on non-desktop linux systems.
This flag provides useful functionality that most linux users will want.
I'm a bit surprised that we still don't have it in all linux profiles,
but I think we've worked around this in the past by adding IUSE=+udev to
quite a few of those packages (33 packages, 116 ebuilds, by my count).
This missing flag came to my attention again on bug 661584 where lvm2
has IUSE=+udev but cryptsetup has only IUSE=udev, so non-desktop users
have a bit of a mismatch between the 2 and get ugly errors on cryptsetup.
Since this flag only affects linux, I think it makes more sense to set
it in linux profiles than to use IUSE defaults.
Any objections to this idea?
A user had contacted me with his input from the HPC world, I'm
redirecting his e-mail here. James is whitelisted now so he can
further participate in this discussion himself if necessary.
As an HPC user of Gentoo I agree that minimal and highly optimized
Gentoo setups are indeed very useful and must stay that way.
Begin forwarded message:
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2018 13:31:59 -0400
From: james <gar...@verizon.net>
To: birc...@gentoo.org
Subject: udev's future
Hello Andrew,
Sorry, I do not have direct posting ability to gentoo-dev, so in
hopes of finding a dev-sponsor, I hope you will paraphrase this
email to you for the sake of preventing 'dev as a default' or base
setting of any sort.
My research and testing for new HPC configurations, has systemd
and udev at the heart of codes to avoid to optimize the
heterogeneous nature of the clusters I'm building. In fact my
development work, although delayed due to transient-illness, is
more of a gentoo-centric convergence of embedded-gentoo, minimal
(server) gentoo, gentoo-hpc clusters and unikernels. As far as
performance and security are concerned 'less' is always better.
Those codes and ebuild that are desired are to added in a higher
level; hoping to continue the leverage the portage tree of
applications, only as dynamically required.
Avoidance of setting udev or in any form mandating any part of
systemd will have dire consequences and cost me months, if not
years to find a way to 'totally undo' the ravages of udev.
Minimized kernels are also fundamental to my loosely-coupled
(gentoo) HPC development. Even tiny Rtos based embedded linux
systems are in the process of being included in a loosely-coupled
gentoo centric heterogeneous HPC cluster. I would 'beg' against
making udev primary under any circumstance.
Gentoo has a unique and powerful position, just for it's position of
choice and minimizational features; After 15 years, I'd hate to have
to work in another distro, as gentoo has served me extraordinarily
well over the decades.
sincerely,
James Horton, PE
Best regards,
Andrew Savchenko
No one was ever talking about forcing udev usage, just default-enabling
support on a few MORE packages than we already do. Our standard linux
stage3's are already udev-enabled. But not udev-forced, anywhere.
Nothing about my proposal was going to force udev on people who don't
want udev at all-- let's not even go down that rabbit hole of discussion.
I was only pushing for more consistency-- either your system would be
fully udev-enabled, or not at all.
-Ben
