Gentoo Archives: gentoo-dev

From: Richard Yao <ryao@×××××××××××××.edu>
To: gentoo-dev@l.g.o
Cc: Zac Medico <zmedico@g.o>
Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Let's redesign the entire filesystem!
Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2012 21:08:56
Message-Id: 4F610837.6060305@cs.stonybrook.edu
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Let's redesign the entire filesystem! by Zac Medico
1 On 03/14/12 16:55, Zac Medico wrote:
2 > On 03/14/2012 01:03 PM, Richard Yao wrote:
3 >> I do not have a separate /usr partition, however I agree with Joshua
4 >> Kinard's stance regarding the /usr move. The point of having a separate
5 >> /usr was to enable UNIX to exceed the space constraints that a 1.5MB
6 >> hard disk placed on rootfs. As far as I know, we do not support a 1.5MB
7 >> rootfs so it would make sense to deprecate the practice of having things
8 >> that belong in / in /usr directory, as opposed to making /usr into a new /.
9 >>
10 >> Deprecation of this practice would mean that people could type
11 >> /bin/command instead of /usr/bin/command in situations where absolute
12 >> paths are necessary. We could symlink things in /usr to rootfs for
13 >> compatibility with legacy software. In a more extreme case, we could
14 >> symlink /usr to /, which would make plenty of sense given that we do not
15 >> need a separate /usr at all.
16 >
17 > I'm not seeing any compelling benefits here that would justify a lack of
18 > conformity with other *nix distros. It seems almost as though it's an
19 > attempt to be different for the sake of being different, perhaps a
20 > symptom of something like NIH syndrome.
21
22 How did RedHat justify that lack of conformity that resulted from moving
23 everything into /usr in the first place? The original UNIX did not have
24 anything in /usr. The /usr split was caused by Bell Labs having to grow
25 UNIX past the constraints of a 1.5MB hard drive. Since we are no longer
26 limited by such space constraints, I fail to see why we should not
27 deprecate /usr.
28
29 In the meantime, it should be possible to create a global usr USE flag
30 that enables/disables gen_usr_ldscript. It would then be possible to
31 delete all of the usr ldscripts, dump /usr into / and symlink /usr to /.
32 The dynamic linker would go to / before /usr and it would be trivial to
33 modify $PATH to ignore /usr entirely. Legacy software that requires
34 /usr/{bin,sbin} would still work while those that want a separate /usr
35 mount could symlink /usr/{bin,include,libexec,sbin} into their rootfs
36 counterparts.

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Let's redesign the entire filesystem! Zac Medico <zmedico@g.o>