On Wed, Nov 21, 2018 at 05:24:24PM +0100, Alessandro Selli wrote: > On 21/11/18 at 16:59, KatolaZ wrote: > > On Wed, Nov 21, 2018 at 07:32:22AM -0800, Rick Moen wrote: > >> Quoting Roger Leigh (rle...@codelibre.net): > >> > >>> I've been following the discussion with interest. > >> For values of 'following' that equates to noting that the matter has > >> been discussed, but then ignoring its substance. > >> > > Dear Rick, > > > > you could have noticed that in essence Roger pointed to the merged-usr > > solution as not only impractical, but also risky and of doubtful > > usefulness. > > > So, you agree then that: > > > 1. A separate /usr serves no practical purpose on a Debian/Devuan system;
I don't think this is true or false. It just depends on the specific cases. > 2. sharing /usr over NFS "is not practical" (no matter it's been done > for decades); Again, neither true or false, depends on the applications. It is defintely practical in some cases, totally useless in other cases. > 3. "you can't split the package database between separate systems" > (whatever this means, who needs to split the package database and why?); > 4. having / and /usr constitute a "managed whole" is the only sensible > way to go; I don't see where Roger said that in his email. > 5. "there is no practical purpose to the separation as in (1) above"; Having /usr as a copy of / is not something that any unix-like system has done forever, or anything that belongs to "ye auld unix tradition" for a solid reason (yeah I know, diskless workstations, but those are not any more "the common way" a unix-like system is used, since at least 15 or 20 years ago. The other reason was space constraints, and this is not a solid reason any more...). The KISS approach would be to keep all the binaries in the / filesystem (this was actually what V7 did). In a sense, the merge should have been probably done the other way round, if at all. > 6. "the separate filesystems can be treated as a managed collection. > It's still pointless though"; > 7. following another path other that the systemd/Free(lol!)desktop and > Debian one "It's simply impractical"? > He said quite the opposite. He said that it is impractical to manage a transition from a non-merged-usr to a merged-usr system, since the odds are high that something can go wrong. > > Please let me know, because the answer would have deep practical > effects to me. > This is totally inconsequential. I personally think that the move to merged-usr is just useless and I can't see a proper reason for that to happen. But I don't see any good technical reason to forbid it completely. Hence, I think that allowing the user to choose is the best way through. Maintaining the option of choosing between the two is what Devuan is trying to do, knowing that it might become harder to support it as time passes. My guess is that there is no real reason for the basic system (the stuff needed at boot time before you get to the point where other filesystems are mounted) to be heavily affected by such a change, since packagers are not going to hardcode /usr/bin/sh in their scripts from tomorrow. On average, nothing that anybody else can say or do could have deep practical effects on me, and I strive to make sure that nothing that I say or do has any practical bad effect on anybody else. I am convinced that the world would be a slightly better place if we all tried a bit of that thinking ;) HND KatolaZ -- [ ~.,_ Enzo Nicosia aka KatolaZ - Devuan -- Freaknet Medialab ] [ "+. katolaz [at] freaknet.org --- katolaz [at] yahoo.it ] [ @) http://kalos.mine.nu --- Devuan GNU + Linux User ] [ @@) http://maths.qmul.ac.uk/~vnicosia -- GPG: 0B5F062F ] [ (@@@) Twitter: @KatolaZ - skype: katolaz -- github: KatolaZ ] _______________________________________________ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng