Wouter Verhelst writes:
> On Wed, Feb 19, 2020 at 06:26:32AM +0100, Marco d'Itri wrote:
>> On Feb 19, Guillem Jover <guil...@debian.org> wrote:
>> > For any pathname that has been hardcoded a symlink can be used for
>> > backwards compat, nothing unlike /bin or /sbin here. This looks just
>> > like a normal bug from a botched transition, nothing special.
>> Creating symlinks in /bin and /sbin DOES NOT result in a merged-/usr 
>> system, because the content of /usr would not be decoupled anymore from 
>> the content of /.
>
> No, but it allows us to *transition* from the current situation to a
> merged-/usr situation, *without* breaking the package manager's
> expectations.

openSuSE tried to transition to merged-/usr that way seven years
ago[1]. I booted a recent live system and noted that they are still
stuck in the transitional state.

I would not recommend following that example.

  [1]: https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Usr_merge

>> A merged-/usr system must have /bin /sbin /lib* symlinks to /usr.
>
> We can have a policy that by release X, any package installing anything
> in /bin /sbin or /lib that is not a compat symlink is RC buggy.
>
> Once we've reached that point, we can drop the directories and convert
> them to symlinks. At that point, dpkg can also ignore any request to
> create the compat symlinks, and later on we can make it an RC bug to
> create compat symlinks if we wish to no longer support non-merged-/usr.
>
> Yes, this approach takes more time, but it is an equally valid way to
> move from unmerged /usr to merged-/usr, and is the approach that people
> are advocating.

It's not "the" approach that people are advocating; that would apply
that there was consensus that the (singular) approach is the right way.
I would recommend *not* following it given it wasn't successful for
other distributions.

The largest blocker for doing anything is that Debian hasn't agreed on
making merged-/usr mandatory anyway.

Ansgar

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