Hi Daniel.

Daniel Reurich - 16.11.18, 10:11:
> Debian as of the upcoming Buster release looks to be implementing a
> merged /usr by default. At this stage there is no plan to make it
> forced... but you never know what happens when their Technical
> Committee suddenly decides it's an issue they need to force a
> decision on...
>
> 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

I do not yet have a firm opinion on this. So for now I just like to
share an experience I had with Debian without usrmerge:

I downloaded a software – I do not remember that it was – from somewhere
– I do not remember where that was at the moment – and there has been a
shell script with the following shebang:

#!/usr/bin/bash

Of course it did not work on this Debian installation without changing
it to "#!/bin/bash". I was surprised about this shell script, cause even
with usrmerge usually there are symlinks that make all binaries
available in '/bin' and '/sbin' as well. And I'd give it some transition
time or use "#!/usr/bin/env bash" (or 'sh' where that is enough, but on
Debian by default '/bin/sh' points to 'dash' and dash does not provide
most of the usual bashisms).

My personal view is that the FHS has quite some deficiencies. I agree
with lots from:

https://cr.yp.to/slashpackage.html

https://cr.yp.to/slashpackage/studies.html

But to move to a completely different standard would be 1) lots of work,
2) make it impossible to base Devuan on Debian. So in my opinion it is
outside of the scope of Devuan for now.

In any case: Regarding a decision I'd take the amount of effort into
account which would be needed to divert from Debian's default. As long
as Debian still supports the usr split, I bet that effort would be
minimal, but as soon as packages appear that just stuff anything in
'/usr', then diverting becomes more and more pointless or Devuan would
need to carry packages with different directory layout.

So for now no firm opinion. Maybe that means I do not care all that much
about it.

Thanks,
--
Martin