/usr --- to link or not to link

[Marcus Brinkmann <Marcus.Brinkmann@ruhr-uni-bochum.de>]

Hello,

I was expecting that, we have the first subtle problem with /usr being a
link to root. Consider the following script "/bin/vi" in the ae package.

#!/bin/sh

if [ -x /usr/bin/vi ]; then
    exec /usr/bin/vi ${1+"$@"}
else
    if [ ${DISPLAY}MT = MT ]; then
	ae -f /etc/ae/ae2vi.rc ${1+"$@"}
    else
        ae -f /etc/ae/ae2vix.rc ${1+"$@"}
    fi
fi

You see? It is checking if vi is installed (any flavour of vi updates the
link in /usr/bin/vi via update-alternatives).

But it will find and execute only itself, leading to infinite recursion.

This is not as easy to fix as it seems (if we want to provide identical
functionality on both systems), and, to be honest, we have enough work to
care about even without -probably- subtle(!) problems popping up because of
the symlink /usr -> .

So, I am asking you if we better should drop the symlink for now and use
normal Linux file system layout. Later interested people can try with the
symlink and watch for problems like this. I am not very interested in this,
and I am in favour of dropping the symlink for now, but I would like to hear
further input, especially how this affects the dynamic linker (maybe it is a
good idea to symlink /usr/lib -> /lib instead?).

OTOH, I can't imagine how much problems like this will occur. Maybe there
are only one or two.

Thanks,
Marcus 

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