Debian still having trouble with merged /usr
1–10 of 310 posts
Re: Debian still having trouble with merged /usr
#2What a pity. Merged usr is so convenient to manage.
I feel like most of the objections & problems relate to the transitory phase, to having to support both, to trying to install old packages. I was thinking Bookworm was committed to a merged usr, but sounds like the next release after, Trixie, will be the first pure usr-merged, when everyone should be on the new thing.
For all the dpkg maintainer's griping, it sure doesnt seem like there are viable alternative implementations available to aliased directories.
Re: Debian still having trouble with merged /usr
#3So that is the reason why that weird "unsupported" message showed up at a system I was upgrading some time ago.
What I don't get... yes, it may be possible to get a dpkg database into an inconsistent state. But why is everyone hoping on a patch that may or may not appear to prevent these bugs, instead of deriving a way to fix a system with an inconsistent dpkg database?
Re: Debian still having trouble with merged /usr
#4Democracy is pretty decent, but comes with some big flaws: tyranny of the minority, enormous amounts of back-and-forth to get anything done, big egos at any level can stop progress.
Debian is the very example of it.
Case in point: other distros forced the usr migration and very few problems were had. Debian put the idea through a committee, of course a minority wanted to keep the old behaviour so Debian decided to support both, guess what, supporting both means having two problems now.
Re: Debian still having trouble with merged /usr
#5From the original proposal from 2012 that is linked to in the article:
> The primary commercial Unix implementation is nowadays Oracle Solaris. [...] By making the same change in Linux we minimize the difference towards the primary Unix implementation, thus easing portability from Solaris.
I wonder what he means by "primary"? I'm reasonably sure than in 2012 OS X was used on more machines than Oracle Solaris.
Re: Debian still having trouble with merged /usr
#6Democracy is pretty decent, but comes with some big flaws: tyranny of the minority, enormous amounts of back-and-forth to get anything done, big egos at any level can stop progress. Debian is the very example of it. Case in point: other distros forced the usr migration and very few problems were had. Debian put the idea through a committee, of course a minority wanted to keep the old behaviour so Debian decided to su…
> Debian put the idea through a committee, of course a minority wanted to keep the old behaviour
That is specifically not what happened, and the article is quite clear about it.
The Technical Committee voted unanimously for merged usr: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=978636#178
The problem is that dpkg, an essential component of Debian, has specific issues with symlinks: https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Dpkg/FAQ#Q:_Does_dpkg_support_...
So the issue is how merged usr is accomplished, not whether it is at all.
Please don't spread this kind of misinformation.
Re: Debian still having trouble with merged /usr
#7Democracy is pretty decent, but comes with some big flaws: tyranny of the minority, enormous amounts of back-and-forth to get anything done, big egos at any level can stop progress. Debian is the very example of it. Case in point: other distros forced the usr migration and very few problems were had. Debian put the idea through a committee, of course a minority wanted to keep the old behaviour so Debian decided to su…
> Debian put the idea through a committee, of course a minority wanted to keep the old behaviour That is specifically not what happened, and the article is quite clear about it. The Technical Committee voted unanimously for merged usr: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=978636#178 The problem is that dpkg, an essential component of Debian, has specific issues with symlinks: https://wiki.debian.org/Team…
I'm quoting the article:
"Debian took a more incremental approach, in part because it strives not to make wholesale changes to users' systems like those required by a flag-day upgrade to a merged /usr. In 2016, the ability to voluntarily switch to that scheme was added, then some attempts were made for newer versions of the distribution to be installed with a merged /usr by default. [...] The location of some files was being resolved at build time to point into /usr/bin (for example), but those files only existed in /bin on the non-merged systems."
The fact that the committee took a decision that the core package manager can't support is baffling to me.
Re: Debian still having trouble with merged /usr
#8Democracy is pretty decent, but comes with some big flaws: tyranny of the minority, enormous amounts of back-and-forth to get anything done, big egos at any level can stop progress. Debian is the very example of it. Case in point: other distros forced the usr migration and very few problems were had. Debian put the idea through a committee, of course a minority wanted to keep the old behaviour so Debian decided to su…
> Democracy is pretty decent, but comes with some big flaws: tyranny of the minority, enormous amounts of back-and-forth to get anything done, big egos at any level can stop progress.
The problem is not in democracy itself as a concept. In both the open-source world and in society itself, the problems arise only when the demos (the population) either grow disinterested in democracy or is small in numbers.
As for "tyranny of the minority" - I hope to never see that phrase again. Protections for minorities in democracies exist for a very good reason. In the case of projects such as Debian to reduce the chance of solo maintainers quitting over frustration about being overruled, in democracies to prevent atrocities and hold up human rights for vulnerable people (e.g. disabled).
Re: Debian still having trouble with merged /usr
#9I understand the problem dpkg is facing (can't know the canonical pathname for an object is, in some cases), but I have huge problems understanding why a symlink farm is preferable. The last thing I want to see on my Debian system is directories with hundreds or maybe thousands of symlink entries. There must be a way to let dpkg do its job if the directory-symlink approach is used instead, surely? (/bin -> /usr/bin)
Re: Debian still having trouble with merged /usr
#10Democracy is pretty decent, but comes with some big flaws: tyranny of the minority, enormous amounts of back-and-forth to get anything done, big egos at any level can stop progress. Debian is the very example of it. Case in point: other distros forced the usr migration and very few problems were had. Debian put the idea through a committee, of course a minority wanted to keep the old behaviour so Debian decided to su…
> Debian put the idea through a committee, of course a minority wanted to keep the old behaviour That is specifically not what happened, and the article is quite clear about it. The Technical Committee voted unanimously for merged usr: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=978636#178 The problem is that dpkg, an essential component of Debian, has specific issues with symlinks: https://wiki.debian.org/Team…
You're spreading misinformation too: based on the article the dpkg maintainer is trying his hardest to obstruct fixes and implementation of the feature despite the voting and consensus.