Re: [gentoo-dev] FHS compliance

[Chris Houser <chouser@gentoo.org>]

Chris Moore wrote:                    [Sat Feb  2 2002,  3:42:32AM EST]         
> Move the portage package ebuild filetree from /usr/portage to 
> /var/lib/portage ( See 5.8.3 +-<pkgtool> and cross reference the 
> purposes of the /usr hierarchy with the purpose of /var which is 
> summarized as follows: /usr's purpose is shareable read-only data 
> (ebuilds are updated!) /var's purpose is sharable/unsharable DYNAMIC 
> application data (such as the ebuild dirtree) and /var/lib has the 
> specific option for the package tool's dynamic data)

I'm not sure that the ebuild dirtree should be considered 'dynamic'.
The only time it *needs* to be updated (written) is shortly before doing
a merge.  Since the merge is going to be going around writing stuff in
the /usr tree anyway, updating /usr/portage doesn't seem that bad.  I
haven't settled on a personal opinion yet, so I'm mostly playing devil's
advocate here.

Consider a normal case where /usr is actually mounted r/o, such as on a
local network of machines where most of the machines mount /usr
read-only from a remote file server.  In this case, none of these
subordinate machines would need to update /usr/portage.  If you wanted
to install new software, you would do so on the file server where
/usr/bin, /usr/lib, /usr/portage, etc. are all mounted r/w, and
therefore you could do the 'emerge rsync' as well package merges.

Now that I think about it, this same argument would apply to
/var/db/pkg, though, so I guess to be consistant the two (/usr/portage
and /var/db/pkg) should be in the same place.  Do they both belong in
/usr?

--Chouser