How to handle bugs like 1041703 - libgudev broken due to missed udev dependencies?

[Martin Steigerwald]

No need to CC me I see new mails on this list.

Thorsten Glaser - 23.07.23, 02:20:44 CEST:
> On Sat, 22 Jul 2023, Martin Steigerwald wrote:
> >> https://bugs.debian.org/1041703
> >
> >[…]
> >
> >I was not aware that eudev is not part of Debian.
> 
> Ouch, yes. This is unfortunate, because smcv is totally right.

Yeah, I initially thought Klaus, the reporter, was using regular udev, 
cause according to the bug report he uses Debian. I thought. But well, 
maybe he does not, cause:

Debian Release: trixie/sid
  APT prefers experimental
  APT policy: (1, 'experimental')
merged-usr: no

Does Debian 12 aka Bookworm not enforce a (IMHO sub-optimal¹) variant of 
usr-merge? Maybe reportbug did not reveal he is actually using Devuan? 
Still no usr-merge here :)

[1] https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Dpkg/MergedUsr

If its a Debian, and even so it is an interesting setup that 1. prefers 
experimental and 2. has eudev from whatever source. The kernel is 
tainted too for several reasons. One may be just an NVidia driver.

> Whereever libeudev1 came from it’s not packaged properly.

Well I am using Devuan here and I would not call their eudev / libeudev1 
as being packaged inproperly. Debian is not the sole source of packages 
on Earth which are properly packaged. That written I did not look at the 
quality of the Devuan eudev packaging. So far I had nothing to complain 
though.

> I’m so-and-so on the idea of bringing eudev to Debian. It’ll
> raise complaints again, but on the other hand if it would enable
> opening communication and reassignment, and if the udev maintainers
> were willing to cooperate¹, it could take away some pains for
> everyone (especially if eudev includes a sysvinit initscript).
> At the same time, introducing it will cause complaints again…

That mirrors quite well the thoughts I had. Someone who would like to 
introduce eudev to Debian would need to have a good amount of 
communication skills and emotional intelligence. Remaining calm in tense 
situations would be a good trait to have as well.

> I was wondering why libinput_drv depends on libgudev, which is…
> GNOME? and found that I don’t even have it installed on my laptop,
> evdev_drv is the only one there and it depends on libudev instead
> of a wrapper.

Hmmm, yeah, I think I switched to libinput driver as it was said to be 
more modern and compatible.

For now I report this eudev issue within Devuan.

Best,
-- 
Martin