Re: / -> /usr symlink
"M.C. Vernon" <mcv21@cus.cam.ac.uk> writes:
> I disagree here (nb - I am not a compsci). I think to begin with we should
> have the /usr dichotamy, with the intention to change it later, when hurd
> no longer has to worry so much about being linux compatible.
I think the problem with this could best be explained by reference to
history:
/usr goes back at least to V6 Unix, and it was the place to put user
home directories. At some point some large binaries started to be
popular, and /usr/bin showed up as a temporary hack, with the
expectation that the root filesystem would get expanded.
You can see how well the "change it later" strategy worked there.
I think we should patch the small number of packages that have a real
problem, and move on. We can create Hurd-specific patches for them,
and submit them for consideration in general. I'm happy if the
general packages just did [ ! -l /usr ] or whatever. I don't have any
interest in trying to tell the ae package that they should not create
/usr/bin/vi, but I do think we could say "please don't create
/usr/bin/vi on Debian GNU/Hurd" and make it with a suitably generic
test.
Thomas
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