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Re: from / to /usr/: a summary



On Thu, 22 Dec 2011 10:35:21 +0100, Reinhard Tartler <siretart@debian.org> wrote:
> On Do, Dez 22, 2011 at 10:14:23 (CET), Philip Hands wrote:
...
> > I have a feeling that most of the people that care about the separation
> > of / and /usr only really care on systems that don't need the packages
> > that are going to have that dependency, and for the few overlaps that
> > there are, the effort would then be focused where it's needed.
> 
> Can you provide examples of packages that can't work with both
> configurations? It would be sad if this configuration choice, which is
> impossible change without reinstalling the system, would restrict the
> user what packages he can install.

No, I'm afraid I cannot -- that's my biggest issue with the whole
subject -- people are arguing for a change I don't like without ever
making explicit the reason they think they need it.

I have a suspicion that all the packages are ones I don't really care
about, but I'm not sure, because somewhere down the line I can imagine
that as a result of this policy change some idiot will feel justified in
adding a dependency on avahi-daemon to coreutils ;-)

FYI I'm on the status quo side, but was trying to come up with a
workable compromise, rather than just whining about it :-)

I agree that a more useful infrastructure for determining whether a
package is suitable for installing on this particular machine, in it's
current configuration, would be better than my hacky virtual package
idea.

As for it being a shame that a reinstall would be required, I think I'd
rather have that than have my system rendered unbootable when I had the
silly idea of giving the latest Gnome a try on one of my servers, for
example, and having a message saying that I need to shuffle the
partitions around first would at least let me decide whether I could be
bothered.

It's not as though the proposal doesn't require me to do that
repartitioning already (if I happen to have such a setup), but
presumably the warning would be in the wheezy release notes, or left as
an unpleasant surprise if I'd not bothered to read them.

Cheers, Phil.
-- 
|)|  Philip Hands [+44 (0)20 8530 9560]    http://www.hands.com/
|-|  HANDS.COM Ltd.                    http://www.uk.debian.org/
|(|  10 Onslow Gardens, South Woodford, London  E18 1NE  ENGLAND

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