* James Carlson <james.d.carlson at sun.com> [2006-04-28 14:10]: > Stephen Hahn writes: > > 1. Must /usr/gnu be a subdirectory of /usr, or can it be a separate > > filesystem? > > It'd be simpler there. But any place would probably do. A different degree of freedom than I meant: I was trying to figure out whether the g* tools in /usr/bin could be hard links, or not.
> > 2. Should /usr/gnu have a structure that allows old versions of > > specific tools to be delivered, along with the best-current (i.e. > > most preferred of recent) version? > > Ouch. The other key question related to that is the operation with > zones. A sparse zone will inherit /usr and thus get a read-only copy > of /usr/gnu -- meaning that every zone has the same tools as the > global zone. Perhaps not what was desired. So separate filesystems should be allowed, even if the default configuration doesn't do so. > The multi-version question is just plain ugly, because some tools have > non-trivial (and incompatible!) configuration file formats. Having > multiple versions at once means solving those problems as well. Okay: one version model. Delivering multiple versions is left to the site to figure out. > (Maybe a `uidfs' would solve it. It mounts on /usr and each user gets > to pick and choose the objects he wants to see in /usr/bin. Just > kidding. Really. ;-}) I like it! > > 3. Are the g-prefixed commands in /usr/bin still required, or do we > > stop adding new ones? > > Unless there's a portability reason to have the g* forms (I don't > think we're the only platform with "gcc," "gmake," and "gawk," so > having those is goodness), I wouldn't think we'd necessarily want to > add more of them. > > They're sometimes handy for users who want to stay in a traditional > UNIX environment and occasionally grab GNU-ish tools (with > /usr/sfw/bin or /usr/gnu/bin or whatever at the _end_ of the $PATH), > but that handiness isn't very substantial. I don't need "ups" for > /usr/ucb/ps, so I probably don't need "gps" for GNU ps. So, one rule would be "if we or another operating system has a commonly known g* variant for this tool, we will ship it as well; otherwise, not shipped". - Stephen -- Stephen Hahn, PhD Solaris Kernel Development, Sun Microsystems stephen.hahn at sun.com http://blogs.sun.com/sch/
