Le 17/11/2025 à 01:16, Kevin Chadwick via Dng a écrit :
> 16 Nov 2025 22:07:52 Martin Steigerwald<martin@???>:
>
>> More than 700 hours on the /usr-move project. Way more it seems.
>>
>> Wow!
>>
>> It seems to be mostly done now. But I still wonder how could the end
>> result ever have been worth spending such a gigantic amount of time
>> on it?
> I wouldn't waste any more time on it but as far as I'm concerned it just means Linux is likely losing the ability to do what OpenBSD does which is have static core system binaries that are the actual core system and not an alternative and I don't think immutable distros are any kind of good replacement for that. Of course I doubt slackware will ever do a usr merge.
>
> https://man.openbsd.org/hier
>
> /sbin
> System programs and administration utilities fundamental to both single and multi-user environments. Most of these programs are statically compiled and therefore do not depend on any system libraries to run.
>
> /bin
> User utilities fundamental to both single and multi-user environments. These programs are statically compiled and therefore do not depend on any system libraries to run.

    There is a misunderstanding: in Debian, /bin and /sbin have never
contained statically linked applications, at least as from the advent of
dynamic linking. The Gnu C library, glibc does not even permit static
linking. If you want to statically link an application, I'd recommend
doing it against Musl libc. The Musl team provides a cross-building tool
for that purpose. Or use a distro built with Musl, like Alpine or
Adélie. But I doubt these distros provide statically linked
applications, for a very good reason I've already explained.

    Therefore, this ability you mention has been lost looooong ago. And
I'm one of those who regret it. I've even wasted years of my free time
in compiling standard Linux tools againt Musl libc, including GCC
itself. It's not completely wasted: I've learned a little bit of GCC.
The difficulty was to compile a static version of GCC which also
included the Ada compiler, and I could see some dirty hacks of the Gnat
runtime inside glibc which are bad programming: one should never call
directly the internal functions or manipulate the internal data of the C
library; always use the official API.

    That said, concerning the usr merge, I consider it was a waste of
time and is a burden for no profit. If all distros do it, it'll just be
a bad moment to live until the transition is complete. AFAIU, I'll need
to do it before I upgrade to Excalibur, or install Excalibur from scratch.

--     Didier