From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org ([208.92.234.80] helo=lists.gentoo.org) by finch.gentoo.org with esmtp (Exim 4.77) (envelope-from ) id 1SrYje-0004xh-MO for garchives@archives.gentoo.org; Wed, 18 Jul 2012 18:12:31 +0000 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id C69C8E06B5; Wed, 18 Jul 2012 18:12:01 +0000 (UTC) Received: from mail-bk0-f53.google.com (mail-bk0-f53.google.com [209.85.214.53]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2BA46E066E for ; Wed, 18 Jul 2012 18:11:07 +0000 (UTC) Received: by bkwj4 with SMTP id j4so1701725bkw.40 for ; Wed, 18 Jul 2012 11:11:07 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=20120113; h=mime-version:in-reply-to:references:date:message-id:subject:from:to :content-type:content-transfer-encoding; bh=q3FsMEjNiyFz/z2VsROCGHehZmZ9nSIiO1hV0oa21Lg=; b=cLW1angx+dEMM+RfpbNkDMeFnnzgTashdchy6eqVAZlRfXnC4ZJ1OxIiHbc4ou7dAO c/8hufqjr0jt41ZgDbstcOC1zwJZwF+yjTHAHJUDIzYaVkK+yQiHYDoAASQCQle9nK/V U5+3vczoWgVmYAY6yKOPHT9YFlrSYQS3PFHvCbADd45JzdXpfPF2EEsBSvYvzul0xb45 sRyXUMmrQloJvMUWM3yKSlsE88Sh6i1zy3u3RnA0Q/pYRmIayyjQ9uXYQqMB+ScRzZ1q XoGODK3naHxdvlNWNDEA+Z9dRT740dMj49Aad7KFdLqA+aI72S1npQuYpFo83ifMEmcZ pTCA== Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.204.129.14 with SMTP id m14mr2312517bks.7.1342635067217; Wed, 18 Jul 2012 11:11:07 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.204.10.12 with HTTP; Wed, 18 Jul 2012 11:11:07 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: References: <5005D70D.3060108@gentoo.org> <1342566449.18313.38.camel@TesterTop4> <50063368.8080106@gentoo.org> <20120718101027.55dd00fe@pomiocik.lan> <5006B7A4.6010202@gentoo.org> Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2012 14:11:07 -0400 Message-ID: Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] Opinion against /usr merge From: Michael Mol To: gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Archives-Salt: 48c30979-9a66-4e06-878e-8b013c132361 X-Archives-Hash: 7768010d41cd67ba1f229b45fe357d9f On Wed, Jul 18, 2012 at 11:04 AM, Canek Pel=C3=A1ez Vald=C3=A9s wrote: > I don't mind the merge of /bin, /usr/bin, /sbin and /usr/sbin; > moreover, I want an even more radical change: > > /usr -> /System > /home -> /Users > /etc -> /Config This would be a terrible idea, IMO. If you can rationalize this, why not any of these? /etc -> /=E8=A8=AD=E5=AE=9A /etc -> /=E7=BB=84=E6=80=81 /etc -> /=E7=B5=84=E6=85=8B /etc -> /configuraci=C3=B3n Codes (and things like 'usr', 'etc' and 'home' are codes) may not be the most intuitive, but they have roughly the same difficulty regardless of your source language. Worse, I think /home to /Users is an *egregiously* poor choice; any native English speaker who has rudimenatry (or even intimate) knowledge of how things previously worked would be very likely to confuse /Users with the historical /usr. > Why should we care about ancient filesystems that didn't supported > long paths, and therefore we got stuck with /usr since we didn't > wanted to waste another *single* character to make it /user? > > Let that silly legacy stuff die. Keep symbolic links to the old > directories for compatibility reasons, if you want to (modern software > should not need it anyhow), and move on. Remember /usr/X11R6? We kept > a /usr/X11R6 -> /usr link for years. Do you miss it? The longer something exists, the more things like procedures and best practices grow to depend on it both explicitly and implicitly. There's a lot of stuff out there which assumes the existing structure. Stuff that people don't necessarily even think about any more, because it just works. Grossly changing the filesystem layout does worse than make maintenance of known software more difficult, it changes a lot of longstanding assumptions for ancient, still-functional code written ages upon ages ago, and it makes it that much more difficult to install new software onto production systems which have been running for decades. That's the legacy of being a UNIX-alike. Heck, I know a local guy who has to struggle to get newish versions of Python, CUPS and other things onto an AIX box, because those are the tools he has to use to satisfy company needs. Based on IRC conversations, it sounds like he spends at least 5% of his time (that *I* know about, anyway) trying to wedge new software into old systems. Change almost always breaks more things than you expect, because you only expect the things you remembered to consider, not the things you forgot existed. Ugh. I've gone offtopic. This email went from having anything to do with udev to being about filesystems layouts. --=20 :wq