Source Mage code commit list

[Arwed von Merkatz <v.merkatz AT gmx.net>]

On Wed, May 10, 2006 at 05:14:09PM -0500, Jeremy Blosser wrote:
> On May 11, Juuso Alasuutari [iuso AT sourcemage.org] wrote:
> > On Thursday 11 May 2006 00:07, Jeremy Blosser wrote:
> > > On May 10, Perforce Review Daemon [p4review AT smee.org] wrote:
> > > > Change 79107 by juuso_alasuutari@juuso_alasuutari-kamayuq on 
> > > > 2006/05/10
> > > > 21:18:26
> > > >
> > > >         Fixed usb printer node naming, added new rules, added new
> > > >         keywords
> > >
> > > There's been a lot of this tweaking going on lately, and 
> > > 50-default.rules
> > > has 224 lines by now, and the spell is looking quite complex overall.  
> > > Can
> > > I ask for a sanity check... are we still installing only upstream + the
> > > minimal config to make things work and leaving the rest for the local 
> > > admin
> > > to take care of?  Or at least making all the helpful autoconfiguration
> > > optional?
> > >
> > > Just checking...
> > 
> > I'd like this to receive more testing, yes. But I guess that's why we 
> > have 
> > test, right?
> > 
> > I don't know what exactly you mean by sanity check. Can you clarify?
> 
> I'm not familiar at all with udev, so I don't know what's sane and what
> isn't.  I do know that there is always a tendency to "help the user out",
> so when I see things start to get heavy on the config we provide, I need to
> ask that those that do know it make sure we're not going too far.
>  
> > I admit the udev spell isn't as bare and stripped as possible. But udev 
> > is 
> > also unlike most other programs. If we would leave it precisely in 
> > its "upstream state", there wouldn't be any rules at all.
> 
> You say that like it's a bad thing.  :-)  We are the distro of choice, not
> the distro of "sensible defaults".  Admins use us because they know they
> can install our packages and get something that's as close as possible to
> what they'd have gotten if they'd done the install themselves.
> Configuration comes after install and is still up to the admin.
>
> If everyone who uses a spell on sourcemage is going to need the same type
> of basic config, we will often provide that config, but we ask before we
> install it.  The bigger that basic config gets, the more true this needs to
> be.  An admin should never have to 'undo' something we did that didn't also
> come with upstream.
> 
> I know that udev is different due to the implications on the system and the
> point it is invoked.  Like I said, I'm not familiar enough with it to have
> a real opinion on what is and isn't sane.  But we have people (including
> you) who do know it well enough, so I'm just asking the question and making
> sure we're keeping it in mind.

I'm not sure what a sane default for udev would contain. Certainly the
rules to move device nodes to subdirectories (e.g. alsa nodes in
/dev/snd) as those are required by applications/libraries using that
stuff.
If we want to go the bare bones config + optional candy way, the basic
rules should only contain the above and whatever is necessary
permission/group wise to get sorcery working.
With our current rules, there is indeed quite a bit of policy involved,
including group settings and permissions for devices, but for most users
this makes stuff a lot easier (i.e. they just have to add their users to
the audio group to get sound). Udev makes it reasonably easy (albeit not
trivial) to change all of those settings without touching our
spell-installed rules files, so I think we can continue with our current
ruleset, though it probably wouldn't hurt to modularize it a bit more.

-- 
Arwed v. Merkatz                              Source Mage GNU/Linux developer
                                                    http://www.sourcemage.org