On Tue, Jan 04, 2011 at 04:47:28PM +0100, Sven Joachim wrote: > On 2011-01-04 16:33 +0100, Steve Langasek wrote: > > In what way is it not already possible to symlink /usr to /? > There are packages which ship a binary /bin/foo and a symlink > /usr/bin/foo to it. Those will likely be broken, since you may end up > with only a broken recursive symlink. Ugh. I guess these packages do this for compatibility with scripts that hard-code a /usr/bin/ path. I don't think that's necessary/justifiable, but it's certainly a problem that needs fixed before pointing /usr at /, yes. :/ > > I think the issue is that not all users *want* /usr symlinked to /, and > > there's no benefit unless everyone switches to the new model. Which is > > rather awkward to enforce on upgrades; I don't know about you, but I have > > some continuously-upgraded older systems where my /usr isn't going to fit on > > my / filesystem. > It is not possible to do the switch on upgrades anyway, at least not > while every package ships files under /usr. You can only do that when > there are no packages installed that have files under /usr. I don't agree. dpkg doesn't need to care that /usr/lib/libm.so really unpacks to /lib/libm.so due to /usr -> / symlink, *except* for the case where the same path exists under both / and /usr; and that can be forbidden by policy. It won't be directly enforceable by dpkg, but I wouldn't be too worried about the resulting bug count since creating your own symlinks here is an oddball thing to do in the first place. -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. Ubuntu Developer http://www.debian.org/ slangasek@ubuntu.com vorlon@debian.org
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