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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 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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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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