Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Dropping static libs support from cryptsetup and lvm2

[Rich Freeman]

On Fri, Aug 2, 2013 at 7:31 AM, Steven J. Long
<slong@××××××××××××××××××.uk> wrote:
> It's funny how you always discuss those two options and consistently fail to mention
> the one option that allows people who never needed an initramfs before to continue
> without one, and still use udev in line with upstream requirements, but there it is:
>
> http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-901206.html

If we clarify the decision (which seems increasingly likely as there
seems to be demand), I'd suggest we would vote on something like:

On Gentoo we (do, do not) support configurations that do not place
/usr on the root filesystem without an early-boot mechanism to mount
it (eg an initramfs, early-running script, init replacement, etc).

When I use the term initramfs it is intended just as a stand-in.  That
said, I think that the initramfs is honestly the cleanest solution for
early-boot setup as it supports a huge variety of configurations.
However, the actual policy would be more general, and the options that
are available to users will be whatever the community is willing to
supply/support.

If anybody considers that ambiguous in any way please speak up now.

As far as my own position goes, I'll be voting for do not.  That
doesn't mean that I think that maintainers should look to make
dramatic changes overnight - we should still be sending out news/etc.
I think that maintainers have made a sufficient case that this is
where the winds are blowing.  I was pretty concerned about this when
the topic came up early last year, but I found getting dracut working
wasn't hard (it is easier and more robust now) and brought a number of
benefits beyond just mounting /usr.  My root is now on lvm+mdadm, and
I have a separate /usr and /var and it all works just fine (they're
bind-mounts on top of yet another mount).  When I build a new kernel
it only takes one line to build an initramfs to go with it.

Rich