Udev will become part of systemd

Udev lead developer Kay Sievers has said that the udev component for managing devices and their kernel drivers will be merged with the source code of systemd and will be developed within this source tree. Working with Lennart Poettering, Sievers started systemd, the alternative to sysvinit and upstart, almost two years ago.

Sievers explained that it will still be possible to install udev independently of systemd. He added that this option will be supported in the long term because separate builds are required to ensure that initrds (initial ramdisks), which don't include systemd, work correctly. Distributions that don't use systemd can continue to build udev as before, but will have to use the systemd sources. With the addition of udev, systemd's version will jump from 45 to 184 to ensure that its version number is higher than that of the last independent version of udev.

Sievers gave several reasons for merging udev with systemd. He explained that a modern init system must be fully hotplug-capable; udev device management and knowledge about device lifecycles is an integral part of systemd and not an isolated logic, said the developer. He added that merging udev and systemd will minimise the duplication of code, resolve circular build dependencies and reduce the two projects' administrative workload. Merging the code will have no effect on the libudev programming interface. Concluding his announcement, Sievers emphasised that compatibility is key for the developers. Greg Kroah-Hartman, who was involved in the development of udev and its predecessor, "hotplug", has welcomed the decision. A few hours after the announcement, udev was merged into the systemd source tree (1, 2).

(crve)