Re: default udev rules

[Kay Sievers <kay.sievers@vrfy.org>]

On Mon, 2008-08-11 at 14:03 +0100, Scott James Remnant wrote:
> On Sun, 2008-08-10 at 21:47 +0200, Kay Sievers wrote:
> > On Sun, 2008-08-10 at 19:07 +0100, Scott James Remnant wrote:
> > > On Sat, 2008-08-09 at 12:21 +0200, Kay Sievers wrote:
> > > 
> > > > We like to remind everybody, that all distros should work towards a
> > > > default udev rules set, instead of maintaining their own home-grown
> > > > version of default rules. We should all unify as far as possible.
> > > > Red Hat, SUSE and Gentoo are already using the same rules files, with a
> > > > minimal rules set on top, in a distro specific file. We ask the rest of
> > > > the universe to join us, and do the same. :)
> > > 
> > > The conflation of names and permissions in the default rules is a
> > > problem for us, and why Ubuntu has not adopted them.
> > 
> > Which names, which perms? Please just list them all, we will try to find
> > a common solution.
> > 
> Setting any group names, and thus any group-writable permissions; our
> rules have these split out into a separate file which is added later.

That makes no difference, assigning perms works any time.

It would be still nice if you could provide facts, al list, what the
differences are, which makes you compose your own, almost identical
default rules, for no obvious reason today. We should try to come up
with a common setup, it can save us all a lot of time debugging.

> > > I'm also entirely unconvinced about putting rules in /lib instead
> > > of /etc
> > 
> > Most udev rules are not config files, not supposed to be edited, and
> > therefore do not belong into /etc. It's a pretty common, and HAL's model
> > for fdi files. As we are moving things from HAL to udev, we may have
> > more things, which are unconvincing until they are used and start to
> > make sense. :)
> > 
> I've yet to have it explained to me why udev rules suddenly aren't
> configuration files.

Default rules are supposed to be entirely replaced on version updates
for that reason. They have dependencies across files, and can only be
seen as a whole, not as randomly editable/collectable.

> They've been configuration files for years,

No, they never have been config files in that sense. They are static
instructions, not supposed to be changed. Editing them may result in a
broken udev setup on updates.

> and we
> encourage people to edit them.

That just wrong to do, and I can not see how you could solve the update
problem that way.

Thanks,
Kay