[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Bug#978636: move to merged-usr-only?



Simon McVittie <smcv@debian.org> writes:

> Should we be more specific than this in what we vote on, to avoid
> later having to adjudicate between developers who say that a particular
> implementation is or isn't merged-usr?

I think that and a transition plan are both key to this project. I
recently installed Debian from scratch on my HiFive unmatched board and
it got merged / and /usr. When I built packages on this device, they
created invalid packages as the shared library dependencies all listed
/lib instead of /usr/lib. That seems like a non-starter to me.

Any plan where a transitioning system cannot be used for ongoing Debian
development seems unworkable to me -- it leaves all active Debian
developers working on un-transitioned systems, which greatly reduces
test coverage from people in the best position to help fix things.

I do use a separate cowbuilder when creating packages to upload, and
that could be configured in un-transitioned mode, but I also regularly
debug packages on my native system as that offers much faster
development times.

> Guillem considers layout 1 to be broken and a mess. I don't agree,
> but I'm not a dpkg maintainer. We should be aware that mandating this
> implementation is likely to require some overruling.

From an architectural purity perspective, layout 1 'looks nicer'. As
that also matches what other distros are doing, it would make us more
consistent across the Linux ecosystem (I believe that's a good thing).

However, I believe only layout 2a would make it possible to build Debian
packages on transitioned systems. That seems necessary to me. We could,
in future, then transition from layout 2a to layout 1 once /lib (and
/bin?)  were no longer in the default search paths to cause invalid
packages to be created.

I don't understand the value of 2b; it's functionally similar to layout
1, but makes for additional work to create the shadow links, along with
consuming space for them. It also doesn't resolve the problem of
building packages.

> Sorry to derail this but I think we should be clear about what we're
> resolving.

I think you've added helpful clarification to the conversation, thanks!

-- 
-keith

Attachment: signature.asc
Description: PGP signature


Reply to: