Re: [gentoo-dev] Opinion against /usr merge

[Alec Warner]

On Wed, Jul 18, 2012 at 12:05 PM, Rich Freeman <rich0@g.o> wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 18, 2012 at 2:53 PM, Michael Mol <mikemol@×××××.com> wrote:
>> AFAIK, neither genkernel nor dracut were expected to get tied to the
>> Gentoo update process. Has that changed?
>
> We don't even update kernels as part of the regular update process,
> let alone initramfs systems.
>
> In general you update them together.
>
> The only issue I could see is if problems arise if you have a
> different version of udev in your initramfs than on your system.  I
> don't know if that actually causes problems.  For the most part after
> the system is booted the initramfs is done its job.
>
> If some package did need a kernel/initramfs/etc to be updated it
> should be the subject of news or an ewarn unless it becomes routine
> practice.  I don't think we want the system to start touching these
> things without operator intervention unless we make it really
> bulletproof like they do on big distros (the only reason they can is
> they have one-size-fits-all kernels and initramfs designs).

I'm not really following your logic here, so forgive me. I completely
understand why folks do not say, rebuild their kernel when it is
updated  (kernel configs are annoying.)

However lets say I have coreutils in / and coreutils in my initramfs.
I upgrade coreutils from v1 to v2. Are you saying that you are too
afraid to update coreutils in / and then also update it in the
initramfs (probably by running $TOOL to copy coreutils from / to
initramfs-root.)

I'm not suggesting that we necessarily do this automatically, just
that people claim 'the tools do not exist to do this now' when in fact
it seems fairly straightforward to do.

I mean presumably you used $TOOL to build the initramfs once, so
running $TOOL again to generate a new initramfs probably should not
screw you, provided you have control over the configuration of $TOOL.

-A

>
> Rich
>