The Next Generation

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

After the recent discussion about a possible new hotplug handler layout
I see the need for a completely different approach. We need to clean
up the current mess, reduce all the silly options and give a sane
environment without all the hacks and shortcomings.

A real "next generation" can only be sane with managed hotplug events,
which prevents races with sysfs timing and cares about order and
dependencies between the events.

The directory device match logic, even the more advanced one proposed
yesterday, will never meet our requirements to limit system usage
at event time. We should expect a ever growing number of hotplug events
and need to be prepared to execute only the stuff which is really needed
for a specific device.

For that reason, we should get rid of all the just too simple
brute-force logic in /etc/hotplug/*, /etc/hotplug.d/ and /etc/dev.d/, which
requires scripts to check if they are called for the right device.

I propose to make the udev architecture _the_ generic hotplug handler.
We use the same rules which we are using today to compose a name for a
specific device. We just need something like a POSTPROCESS="/sbin/some-program"
key for our rules which adds a program to a list of programs to be executed
after the device node is created.
udev needs a bit of tweaking to handle physical devices, but it applies the same
logic as we currently use for device naming.

This way we would get a nice, clean and understandable rule based event handling
with a single source of policy, and not the current mess with confusing directories
spreaded all over the system. And sure, it would give us the efficiency one can
expect from a "next generation" thing. :)

What do you think?

Thanks,
Kay


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