[systemd-devel] [PATCH] Drop the udev firmware loader

[Samuli Suominen]

On 01/06/14 08:45, Lennart Poettering wrote:
> On Fri, 30.05.14 04:32, Michael Biebl (mbiebl at gmail.com) wrote:
>
>> 2014-05-30 4:26 GMT+02:00 Greg KH <gregkh at linuxfoundation.org>:
>>
>>> You update systemd but you don't update the kernel?  How does that make
>>> any sense?
>> There might be very valid reasons why you need to stick with the old
>> kernel. As said, one example could be that the new one simply doesn't
>> boot. Requiring lock-step upgrades makes the system less
>> fault-tolerant.
>> So where possible this should be avoided.
> To make this clear, we expect that systemd and kernels are updated in
> lockstep. We explicitly do not support really old kernels with really
> new systemd. So far we had the focus to support up to 2y old kernels
> (which means 3.4 right now), but even that should be taken with a grain
> of salt, as we already made clear that soon after kdbus is merged into
> the kernel we'll probably make a hard requirement on it from the systemd
> side. 
>
> I am tempted to say that we should merge the firmware loader removal
> patch at the same time as the kdbus requirement is made. As that would
> be a clean cut anyway...
>
> Also note that at that point we intend to move udev onto kdbus as
> transport, and get rid of the userspace-to-userspace netlink-based
> tranport udev used so far. Unless the systemd-haters prepare another
> kdbus userspace until then this will effectively also mean that we will
> not support non-systemd systems with udev anymore starting at that
> point. Gentoo folks, this is your wakeup call.
>
>

I've already set minimum kernel required to 2.6.39 in >= 213, and I'd be
fine
setting it even higher. Talking only of the udev bit here.
I don't like dropping support for old versions, but if that's what
has to be done, I'll go with that.
Please, don't use this as an excuse to drop support for MinimalBuilds as
described
in wiki in some manner.
As in, if it's still possible to use some kernel, like kernel with
kdbus, and even
if it requires an userspace library like 'libsystemd-something' to go
with it, and still
get a udev one way or another, that can run standalone, we are all good.

I'd really hate to be forced to fork (or carry huge patchset) unnecessarily
(I'm not a systemd hater, I'm not a eudev lover, I'm simply working on what
is provided to me by *you*, udev upstream)

- Samuli