Bug#1050001: enabling telemetry to track usage of /bin compat shims?
On Wed, 2023-08-23 at 20:50 +0200, Ansgar wrote:
> > /bin and /lib etc. remain directories (so there is no aliasing). All
> > actual files are shipped in /usr. / contains compatibility symlinks
> > pointing into /usr, for those files/APIs/programs where this is
> > needed
> > (which is far from all of them). Eventualloy, over time, the set of
> > compatibility links is reduced to a mere handful.
[...]
> How do you decide when to remove a link? Is there a simple mechanism to
> detect when users no longer use it?
I thought about this a bit. A possible solution might be using a small
wrapper program in /bin that tracks usage of the compat shim (possibly
together with minimal information about the callee) plus a telemetry
service collecting this data and submitting it to Debian.
The shim should also look at $PATH and make some educated guess whether
it was invoked explicitly using /bin/${something} or just as
${something} and PATH lookup would have found /usr/bin/${something}
either way.
To get accurate data, this should be enabled by default (with
possibility to opt out).
I think solving this issue is crucial before we can agree on proceeding
the proposed switch to the Jackson filesystem layout.
Ansgar
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