[gentoo-dev] Re: usr merge

[Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@cox.net>]

M. J. Everitt posted on Fri, 08 Apr 2016 03:35:33 +0100 as excerpted:

> On 08/04/16 02:42, William Hubbs wrote:

>> The default installation location of all coreutils binaries is
>> /usr/bin, then we move everything around in the ebuild.
>> We are deviating from upstream in this example.
>>
> I would expect this isn't the only example of this in Gentoo .. we
> customise the packages to make sense to the Gentoo distro, not conform
> to a multitude of random "standards" applied by many developers. So,
> whilst I accept that its desirable to match 'upstream' - this isn't
> always going to be possible.

Agreed, and moreso, while gentoo does try to stay close to upstream in 
general, I'd argue that paths aren't the place to do that.  Instead, for 
paths, we should be sticking as close to FHS, XDG/freedesktop.org, etc, 
as makes sense (and in general it's reasonable and /does/ make sense, tho 
when the specs are designed with for instance binary distros in mind, 
they don't always).  Because there are specs, but upstreams may do all 
sorts of random things in terms of path, some of which aren't going to 
work particularly well on gentoo or other distros attempting to stay at 
least reasonably close to FHS and XDG/freedesktop.org specs.

> I would also re-iterate, as I'm sure you're aware .. there ARE
> differences between sbin and bin .. unless of course you spend all your
> time in a Rooted VM where it doesn't matter if you accidentally trash
> your system. Some of us maintain a sensible user/superuser distinction
> for a variety of reasons, and simplifying your filesystem to suit some
> particular package style doesn't really sound like good reasoning for
> causing a lot of headaches for maintainers and a distro overall.

But... the real important distinction in terms of user vs. superuser 
executables is file ownership and permissions, not the directory they're 
in.  As long as the ownership and permissions are correct, the user can 
only run what they are supposed to, regardless of whether it's in bin or 
sbin.

And as a user running the bin/sbin merge, I can tell you based on 
experience that tab-completion works differently for users vs. superusers 
with the merge just as it does without it, because again, it's based on 
ownership and permissions too, not just whether it's in the path (tho it 
must be that as well).

Besides which, users unaccustomed to the CLI (and thus not knowing about 
tab completion) don't tend to know or care where binaries are anyway, as 
they prefer menu entries, complete with (graphical) sudo or these days, 
policy-kit integration.

Which is ultimately what distros realized, bin/sbin didn't really matter 
to the general user any more, thus the bin/sbin merge, as having all 
installed executables in the same general location was easier to manage 
and didn't matter to (most) users anyway.

But again, gentoo's about choice, and I'd hate to see that choice taken 
away from gentoo's users anyway, because many of them /do/ actually care, 
quite a bit in fact, which is why they're on gentoo in the first place.
=:^)

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman