Re: merged-/usr transition: debconf or not?
On Wed, Nov 17, 2021, at 1:37 PM, Sam Hartman wrote:
>>>>>> "Zack" == Zack Weinberg <zack@owlfolio.org> writes:
> Zack> Therefore: either someone fixes the bug,
> Zack> or the transition will have to be canceled. It appears to me
> Zack> that the tech ctte agrees with all of this.
>
> There's a third option.
> We sit around in the state where /bin is a symlink, but where you cannot
> move files to /usr paths in the package system until the bug is fixed.
I guess that is a potential outcome. In a sense we are already in that state, given the installed base of systems where /bin is already a symlink.
I don't *like* that outcome; I think it's asking for lots and lots of accidental breakage in unstable post-bookworm, as packages are rebuilt on systems that now have /bin a symlink. But I can't personally offer to fix dpkg, either (way oversubscribed on other projects, and this doesn't seem like a job to be tackled by someone new to dpkg, tbh).
> I.E. I don't think the transition is going to get canceled; we're too
> far down that path.
*Are* we? It seems to me that we could still, at this point, pull usrmerge from testing and stable, push point updates to the installers for all supported releases to flip the default back to non-merged /usr, and advise the installed base to run dpkg-fsys-usrunmess before their next apt upgrade. It'd be ugly but it might well be *less* ugly than being stuck in the state you describe. I understood the tech-ctte to be explicitly holding that option open.
The proponents of merged /usr would be unhappy, but that does not bother me.
zw
Reply to: