Control: block 1051371 by 1050001 Hi,
On Tue, 2023-09-12 at 20:48 -0700, Russ Allbery wrote: > I think the root problem behind this bug is that it is revealing we have > not made a decision about /bin and /usr/bin path references in Debian > after /usr-merge. Various people, myself included, made assumptions about > what the policy would be, but we never actually decided anything that I am > aware of and people's assumptions are not matching. I think we need to > talk about this directly, after which what to do with this bug will > probably become obvious. > > So far as I can tell, there are three main possibilities: > > (a) Although /bin and /usr/bin are merged (and likewise for the other > merged paths), Debian will continue to require (or at least recommend) > use of /bin paths for things such as /bin/sh that historically used > those paths. > > (b) Since /bin and /usr/bin (and likewise for the other paths) are merged, > /bin/sh and /usr/bin/sh are equivalent. Packages can use whichever > path they want, and Debian will end up with a mix of both references. > > (c) Although /bin and /lib technically work due to the aliasing, they are > deprecated and everything in Debian should stop using those paths. > All paths should point to /usr/bin and /usr/lib now. As far as I understand people wanting merged-/usr want (b) (I do). There have been people advocating (a) in this bug. However, there is a proposal by Jackson for an alternative filesystem layout based on symlink farms in consideration by the technical committee. This advocates removing compat symlinks in /bin, /sbin over time[1], thus requiring (c). The technical committee should therefore probably be aware of this policy issue in their consideration of #1050001; the resolution of which might also cover this issue (#1051371). Ansgar [1]: https://bugs.debian.org/1050001#33
