Hi Katolaz,

KatolaZ writes:

> On Sat, Nov 17, 2018 at 11:45:03AM +0100, KatolaZ wrote:
>
> [cut]
>
>>
>> OK, before we continue with a flame about what is wrong and what is
>> right: it seems that the transition to the merged usr is *not*
>> mandatory so far, but it is actually performed at install time. I am
>> currently trying to understand at which point during installation this
>> happens, so that we could just make it optional (i.e, with an opt-in
>> semantics).
>
> I should have waited a couple of minutes before writing: it looks like
> it is just an option in debootstrap. It should be fairly easy to make
> it optional by tweaking base-installer. Working on that. We will have
> it in the new beowulf installer.

This reminded me of something I did to build my Devuan Docker images:
passing --no-merged-usr to debootstrap. See

https://gitlab.com/paddy-hack/devuan/blob/master/bootstrap.sh#L21

Just like */bin and */sbin are useful to distinguish between programs
intended for general use and system administration use, the distinction
between / and /usr is useful to tell critical and non-critical programs
apart.

Whether you make use of the distinction and how is the user's decision.
You can put all of */bin and */sbin or just */bin in your PATH depending
on your needs. You can put / and /usr on the same file system or put
/usr in a place that makes sense to your use case.

Removing the distinction takes the option away from the user. Whether a
distribution wants to "pay the cost" of keeping this as an option for
their user base is the distribution's decision. The user base can vote
with its feet.

# The cost is in terms of having to think about what should go where for
# one's user base. As far as I can see the /usr merge is mostly just an
# attempt to get rid of the need to think. Pointing out that others did
# this already is lemming mentality. Saying that you need stuff in /usr
# anyway is blindly assuming it is needed in all cases or refusal to fix
# what your users consider to be a bug.

I have / and /usr on the same file system on all of my machines but
still appreciate the fact that I have a choice. I like to keep it that
way. As for */bin and */sbin, the latter category is not in my PATH. I
also like to keep exercising that as an option.

The idea of grouping certain classes of files in different directories
makes it just so much easier for homo sapiens to keep a grip on things.
Just imagine what / would look like if hardware progress would have
outpaced software developments in 1971. There would not have been any
need for /usr and we might have ended up with /games and /include and
/local and /share as well as /src. Actually, that doesn't look all bad
but I'm glad that the lack of disk space in 1971 helped us identify the
notion that there are critical and non-critical files on our computers.

About that not looking all bad, perhaps the merge should be in the other
direction, from /usr to / rather than from / to /usr. Or can we expect
suggestions to move /var, /tmp, /dev, /run, /media etc. to /usr "because
all the stuff in /usr needs it anyway"?

# Those are a non-serious suggestion and a rethorical question, in case
# that didn't come across.

So, I'm against a *forced* /usr merge. I hope Debian does the right
thing but if necessary, I would like to see Devuan correct the wrong.
However, let's focus on init freedom (and beowulf) first!

Hope this helps,
--
Olaf Meeuwissen, LPIC-2            FSF Associate Member since 2004-01-27
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