Re: [gentoo-project] rfc: separate /usr preparation vote

[Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org>]

On Sun, Aug 18, 2013 at 11:48 PM, Rick "Zero_Chaos" Farina
<zerochaos@gentoo.org> wrote:
> On 08/18/2013 11:10 PM, Rich Freeman wrote:
>> On Sun, Aug 18, 2013 at 10:48 PM, William Hubbs <williamh@gentoo.org> wrote:
>>> Basically the status quo includes specific changes that were made in
>>> our packaging to allow this sort of working separate /usr without
>>> initramfs configuration to continue limping along, but we need to undo
>>> them.
>>
>> Why do we have to undo them?
>>
>> I can understand that implementing them was a waste of time, but that
>> time is already wasted.  Does it take much effort to maintain the
>> fixes?  For all I know they do - but could you articulate this?
>>
>> I fully support that we should stop doing any more work to keep a
>> separate /usr working without an initramfs.  My question is why do we
>> need to start undoing the work that has already been done?
>
> Because, the work that has already been done makes no bloody sense.
> bzip2 is in / but not xz or lbzip2.

As I said, I fully agree that the work that was already done makes no
sense.  The question is whether undoing that work makes any sense.  If
a city takes tax dollars to build a huge stadium I think that makes no
sense.  On the other hand once a stadium is built tearing it down
makes no sense either - what is done is done.

>
> The cruelest prank of all of this bullspit, systemd is installed in /
> despite many upstreams hardcoding THE CORRECT LOCATION of /usr.  Yeah,
> that's right, we are moving things to / and breaking systems and then
> upstream just laughs at us when we report bugs.

I said that I think anything not stable a year ago should be free to
do whatever, which would include systemd.  I don't think anybody who
has been vocal on the issue really objects to moving systemd to /usr
(and if you're going to move it you might as well do it before all the
gnome users switch).

>
> It is not possible to keep systems running like this, and it is HARMING
> us to even try.  Please, stop moving things from /usr to /, and please
> move things back where upstream expects them.  Honestly I'm considering
> a /usr merge on my system just to stop all this stupidity from breaking
> my system.

Can you give specific examples of how the current state of affairs is
causing problems (especially for something other than systemd)?  That
is really what I'm getting at.  I am fully capable of believing that
moving stuff to / could be causing issues - I just haven't seen a
single example on the lists in these discussions pointing one out.

If you could point out some specific examples I think that this would
really help your case.  I'm pretty sympathetic to your arguments but
even I'm on the fence about moving things back (as opposed to merely
stopping the continued flow of stuff to /), and I suspect many on the
Council will be far more skeptical.  Some concrete examples of
problems would probably go a long way to convincing everybody.

If this is only about systemd feel free to point out some examples
anyway so that we can at least get a vote to clarify whether systemd
can move apart from the rest.

Rich