Fellow Council Members:

We now have two methods of handling separate /usr configurations on
Linux in the tree.

The first, and by far, the most flexable method is to use an initramfs.
This method is now documented in the initramfs guide [1] and the handbooks.
It would need to be used if a user needs specialized drivers running or
modules loaded before the / or /usr file systems can be accessed.
A non-inclusive list of these situations would be RAID, LVM2, ZFS, and
software for encrypted file systems.

The second method can be used if the flexability of the first method is
not needed. It involves re-emerging >=sys-apps/busybox-1.20.0 with the
sep-usr use flag active and following the instructions in the elog
messages. This is the way to support separate /usr without an initramfs
if someone wants this.

The goal of separate /usr support is to insure that /usr is always
available when / is, and both of these methods meet this goal. If users
switch to one of these methods, there is no further work required by us
to support separate /usr configurations.

I have gone over this with Diego in QA, and he agrees that these are the
methods we should use. That is why he is on the cc: specifically for
this email.

I believe the only remaining step is for the council to approve this
plan, so I would like it to be added to the agenda.

If this is approved, my plan will be to release a news item then
give a time window for users to read the news item and make their
decision [2]. Once the time window expires, we could assume that users
with separate /usr have switched to using one of these two methods of
supporting it.

Thanks,

William

[1] http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/initramfs-guide.xml

[2] I'm thinking a reasonable time window would be 30 days. That could
be up for discussion; however, I don't know of any reasons that we
should wait too much longer.