Steve Litt wrote on 16.11.18 11:11:
> On Fri, 16 Nov 2018 22:11:17 +1300
> Daniel Reurich <daniel@???> wrote:
[...]
>> So... for Devuan, do we want to default to a merged /usr in our coming
>> release of Beowulf or are we going to resist another pointless
>> rearranging of the deck chairs...
>>
>> Keen to get some feedback on this
>
> Back in the what, 1970's, the Unix guys
> split /usr/sbin, /sbin, /usr/bin, and /bin to accommodate early boot,
> by separating out statically compiled stuff used in the earliest boot.
> But then initramfs made these separate directories unnecessary, so why
> in the world would we continue the split?

Steve,

with all due respect, in think your reasoning suffers from some kind of
slight misconception:

The file system hierarchy split between / and /usr happened because the
disk mounted at / on one particular machine was filling up. Neither was
it a deliberate design decision, nor was it deemed elegant at the time
(and still is not). It was nothing but a dirty makeshift botch to quickly
compensate for some transient hardware constraint almost fifty years ago.
It has nothing to do with the practice of using an initramfs (or similar
construct) for early user space system initialization.

In fact, if anything, a merged /usr obsoletes the need for an initramfs
WRT mounting system partitions, as it is highly unlikely for /usr to
reside on a separate volume when it is merged into the root hierarchy,
where it belongs. If you dislike initramfs, you should go for a merged
/usr tree to err on the safe side when it comes to ensure availability
of essential system components during system initialization.

And bringing anything related to systemd into the picture just because
its proponents also happen to support merged /usr is a red herring.

[Cut reasoning based on aforementioned misconception about the history
of split /usr, and initramfs or systemd being relevant to the question
at hand.]


Best regards,

Urban

--
Sapere aude!