>>"Steve" == Steve Greenland <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Steve> On 16-Jun-02, 22:04 (CDT), Manoj Srivastava <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> Having an explicit, separate documentation of technical things
>> that has to be maintained, or else it slips out of synchronization
>> with reality, is certainly not to be preferred to haveing a
>> deterministic way of inferring such information.
Steve> But it's not a reliable prediction. It's simply a repoort on
Steve> the present situation. There's nothing to prevent things from
Steve> being moved out of /bin (except those subject to the
Steve> FHS).
Except to break compatibility, and to change a public
interface to the system. Such changes are never made lightly, and if
it is expected that debian developers exercise such piss poor
judgment we may as well give up and migrate to another OS.
Steve> Additionally, a list of "these tools are guaranteed to
Steve> be available before /usr is mounted" is not the same as a list
Steve> of "these are the tools from Essential packages that are in
Steve> /bin:/sbin", and need not be particularly fluid.
I fail to see a technical reason behind this statement of
opinion. Any canonical list would require maintainence and perhaps
central control, I see no reason why such ossification gains us
anything.
If I have an early running package, I look at what I need in
/bin and /sbin; and depend on the non-essential packages providing
the tools. I also trust, and depend on, the competence of my felloow
developers not to move things out.
Steve> Because it's not reliable. At least some portion of it is
Steve> subject to the random whims of the package maintainers (or,
Steve> far more likely, the random whims of bug reporters and a
Steve> package maintainer who is (understandably) unaware that a few
Steve> of Debian's umpteen thousand packages rely on that particular
Steve> binary being in /bin).
If we have become the cess pit of such incompetence, we may as
well give up, and no set of rules would stave off the mould and decay
that shall inhabit the misasma that the OS would have become.
manoj
--
"You can't get very far in this world without your dossier being
there first." Arthur Miller
Manoj Srivastava <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <http://www.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/>
1024R/C7261095 print CB D9 F4 12 68 07 E4 05 CC 2D 27 12 1D F5 E8 6E
1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B 924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C
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