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On 09/29/2013 09:05 PM, Mark David Dumlao wrote: |
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> On Mon, Sep 30, 2013 at 9:50 AM, Daniel Campbell <lists@××××××××.us> wrote: |
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>> Anyway, I'm not in favor of FHS _per se_, but it sounds pretty |
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>> reasonable to have some semblance of order among where different parts |
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>> of a system go. Shoving everything into /usr and symlinking everything |
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>> else seems like a stop-gap or good-enough solution that came about due |
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>> to ignoring the existing standard (FHS) and refusing to try to change |
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>> it. I could be wrong, though. My point is I'm not dogmatic about it; I |
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>> just think that if the FOSS community were willing, a better solution |
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>> could be crafted. |
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> |
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> It's true that it's nice to have a semblance of order where different parts go. |
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> But "all libraries and binaries in /usr" is also a semblance of order. You don't |
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> separate stuff for the sake of separating stuff. You separate them because you |
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> have a good reason to separate them. It turns out that there isn't a good reason |
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> to separate them, and that there's no way to predictably separate them. |
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> |
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> Mushing them together isn't just a stop-gap or good-enough solution. The |
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> idea of keeping system-critical separate from non-critical was not maintainable |
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> in the long run to begin with. |
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> |
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If separating them was unmaintainable, why bother with /bin and /sbin at |
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all, then? If /usr is essentially replacing what / was originally, it's |
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hard to take any filesystem standard seriously and we return to chaos. |
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What was /usr's original purpose? I'm not really in favor of the |
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separation or the merging; I'm in favor of what makes sense. For now, |
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shoving things into /usr is practical because most other software does |
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it. But that's following a trend. It's become *de facto* standard |
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instead of a well-designed, well-reasoned standard. If the change to |
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/usr was brought about because the FHS has holes in it, why not draft a |
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new FHS completely from the ground up? Sometimes a vast rewrite is |
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necessary in a standard, and the new standard could address modern |
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challenges. |
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|
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>>> If you were in the shoes of the ebuild packagers, you would be hard-pressed to |
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>>> predict which packages belong in the / PREFIX and which ones in /usr PREFIX, |
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>>> 100 times out of 100. But you need 100 times out of 100 or you'll get |
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>>> people whining |
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>>> that they can't boot or whining that they need to do some migration. That's |
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>>> why / and /usr separation is broken. |
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>>> |
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>> I agree, but perhaps the / and /usr separation is a symptom of a greater |
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>> problem instead of being the problem in and of itself. Like Inception, |
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>> maybe we need to go further. :P |
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> |
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> The greater problem is what I'm pointing out already. Even in principle, you |
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> just can't predict which files belong in /. It's always been a case-by-case, |
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> system-by-system thing, and it just so happens that 99.9xxx% of the cases |
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> are the same. Distro packagers, however, have to decide for 100% of the cases. |
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> So they're going to end up making weird decisions that are easy for you to |
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> second-guess but are actually tough. |
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> |
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> If you want to solve the "hard problem", you want to create a tool that |
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> will automate / and /usr migrations. Portage has to be aware of the tool |
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> and maybe 100% of ebuilds will have to be rewritten to take advantage of the |
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> dynamic prefixes set by the tool. That solves it for good, and you can have |
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> your / and /usr separate. But only for gentoo. |
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> |
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> Every package manager needs to have a similar tool and similar intelligence |
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> for that to work. |
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> |
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I agree, but I don't see a tool like that coming up. Enforcing a /usr |
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merge and in edge cases forcing initramfs is the right *practical* |
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solution, but I don't think it solves the greater problem, which is |
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social and organizational. It may not even be a solvable problem, given |
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how vast and diverse the FOSS world is. But maybe discussion on it can |
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still be insightful, even if it can't be fruitful. |