Bug#994388: dpkg currently warning about merged-usr systems

[Helmut Grohne <helmut@subdivi.de>]

Hi Luca,

On Tue, Mar 29, 2022 at 12:43:23PM +0100, Luca Boccassi wrote:
> Well, of course it's incomplete - if it is as it appears to be and the
> maintainer refuses to engage in any way, how can any reasonable
> progress be made? Especially in the fact of constantly shifting goal
> posts. First a working patch was needed to make progress. Now it's a
> patch that is working, perfect, and satisfies arbitrary and unspecified
> 'purity' requirements that are left mostly unstated and need to be
> specified by third parties, before the patch can be even looked at. I
> wonder what will be next...

Your way of engaging is anything but constructive. Please stop. I am
unsurprised that communication between you and Guillem does not work
that way. Please reflect on your attitude and behaviour. It is not in
line with our code of conduct.

> You say "how badly this transition is planned and carried out", and yet
> there is tangible proof that it is in fact working fine for all intents
> and purposes, without any major issues, for years and years. Again:
> default for new installations in the past two stable releases, default
> and forcibly transitioned for the past two Ubuntu releases (well, one
> past and one coming next month), plus every other major distro doing
> the same thing, in more or less the same way. The only observed issues
> are minor or solved long ago, or theoretical. In fact, the only
> widespread system breakages that are currently known to have happened
> were caused by the misleading dpkg postinst that was added some days
> ago. And all of this despite obstructionism from the maintainer of the
> involved package. To me this looks like a remarkably successful
> endeavour, all things considered.

The /usr merge has a history of breakage affecting many users. It was
even reverted due to breaking the archive. It has a history of its
proponents not fixing the resulting bugs, but deferring them to others
and/or denying/downgrading them. I've definitely spent more than a week
on fixing /usr-merge breakage excluding the time discussing it. It is
not working fine at all. Possibly, it is fixable on a technical level,
but it is totally broken socially. Please stop this unconstructive
behaviour.

While this may sound single-sided, Guillem's behaviour wrt /usr-merge
cannot be described as constructive either. Rest assured, that side of
the picture is not being ignored. That should also be evident from
dpkg.git at this time.

Helmut