On Nov 20, Adam Borowski <kilobyte@angband.pl> wrote: If you are seriously concerned with the small issuses caused by the transition to merged-/usr then I have a better proposal. Plan C: just stop supporting non-merged-/usr systems since these problems are caused by having to support both, and there is no real benefit in doing that other than pleasing the few people who are scared by changes. > * move binaries to /usr/bin one by one, without hurry. If it takes 10 > years, so what? If it takes 10 years then we will have to wait 10 years to deliver an enabling technology for important features. Also, I seriously question that this would be practical: moving a binary requires coordination with all other packages using it, while the switch to a merged-/usr is transparent. If you believe that a 10 years timeframe for a change is totally OK then you obviously do not care about it, so you what you are really arguing for is doing nothing. > * /bin would be left populated with nothing but /bin/sh, /bin/bash and > whatever else POSIX demands. There are no benefits from a merged-/usr scheme as long as there are system binaries outside of /usr. > Another question is, why? It has been documented here long ago: https://wiki.debian.org/UsrMerge . > main reason is compatibility with Solaris -- which hasn't been relevant for No, it's not the main reason. It's not even an interesting reason, it's just an example showing that this kind of setup has been tested for years and is nothing new. You are misconstructing the arguments in favour of merged-/usr to be able to dismiss them easily. > a long long time. Even the other distribution (Fedora) that has done the > split is rapidly following Solaris into obscurity (the whole RPM world has > gone to 20% of web servers from 65% a few years ago, other server uses seem > to be alike[2], Red Hat has been gobbled up). This leaves mostly claim #4: WTF? Fedora is not relevant, it's RHEL that matters and it switched to a merged-/usr. If you are seriously claiming that RHEL is "fading into obscurity" then we obviously lack a common ground to discuss anything. > # Fact: The /usr merge makes sharing the vendor-supplied OS resources > # between a host and networked clients as well as a host and local > # light-weight containers easier and atomic. Snapshotting the OS becomes a > # viable option. The /usr merge also allows making the entire > # vendor-supplied OS resources read-only for increased security and > # robustness. > -- which is untrue as a system with /etc and /var out of sync with /usr is > broken. There are attempts of reducing /etc but I have seen nothing about > /var. These are few examples of the features that a merged-/usr system enables. /etc and /var do not just get "out of sync", so your argument is wrong. -- ciao, Marco
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: PGP signature