On Tue, Jan 05, 2016 at 09:20:31AM -1000, Joel Roth wrote:
> Rainer Weikusat wrote:
> > Clarke Sideroad <clarke.sideroad@???> writes:
> > > So I've been thinking more about this as to why?
> > >
> > > It is quite obvious that it is driven by Redhat to be the same as Oracle
> > > Solaris, they say as much.
> >
> > That's "quite obviously" an after-the-fact justification and the
> > corresponding freedesktop.org text,
> >
> > http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/separate-usr-is-broken/
> >
> > (still) quite plainly states that udev (it names no other examples) is
> > developed based on the assumption that / and /usr reside on the same
> > device and that any bug reports regarding this are WONTFIXes. IOW,
> > that's a policy decision certain people originally made for "their
> > systems" which is now forced on everybody else.
>
> Reading the above link, and also this discussion
>
> http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/TheCaseForTheUsrMerge/
>
> it appears there are two aspects considered:
>
> 1. Merging the longstanding directories for executables: /bin /sbin /usr/bin /usr/sbin
> 2. Making libraries in /usr/lib and friends available at boot time.
>
> Gobo Linux, to take one example, has been doing the first
> since its inception. Executables are left in the original
> build directory, and symlinked to /bin. The same approach
> with libraries, so that packages can be uninstalled by
> simply removing the directory, and cleaning the symlinks.

And there's even a handy command for managing this: stow.
And it's even a package in the devuan repositories!

-- hendrik