Re: DEP 17: Improve support for directory aliasing in dpkg

[Ansgar <ansgar@43-1.org>]

Hi Russ,

On Wed, 2023-05-10 at 13:50 -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
> Ansgar <ansgar@43-1.org> writes:
> > As far as I understand, we do explicitly *not* care about our
> > derivatives with regard to merged-/usr as some packages in Debian
> > recommend users to move *away* from merged-/usr to split-/usr on
> > derivatives, i.e., to an unsupported fs layout.
> 
> Caring about them isn't the same thing as doing everything they want.  We
> can both try to make things as smooth for them as possible and still make
> design decisions about Debian that they may disagree with or that may make
> some property they want to maintain difficult or impossible.  It's the
> sort of decision we have to make on a case-by-case basis.

Debian going out of its way to tell derivative users to switch back
from merged-/usr to split-/usr is the *opposite* of trying to make
things as smooth for them as possible.

I asked the ctte to consider not telling derivative users to revert
from merged-/usr and was told me that "we [ctte] would not consider
this [change] to be in line with our existing decisions" (informally).

I take that as explicitly not caring that we break derivative users'
systems.

Ansgar