On Mon, Nov 08, 2021 at 12:56:49PM +0100, Marco d'Itri wrote: > On Nov 08, Simon Richter <s...@debian.org> wrote: > > Right now, it is sufficient to preseed debconf to disallow the usrmerge > > package messing with the filesystem tree outside dpkg. Managed installations > > usually have a ready-made method to do so. > This is not really relevant, since the conversion is mandatory. > The CTTE stated that the only exception is "Testing and QA systems > should be able to avoid this transition, but if they do, they cannot be > upgraded beyond Debian 12", and my plan is to arrange for this with > a flag file.
As I see it the CTTE decision effectively allows the transition to be deferred until the moment you want to upgrade to 13. Ideally the transition is performed already in the 11→12 upgrade automatically for you, but you could prevent that automatism and do it manually someday while you have 12 installed (as no 12 package can depend on merged /usr as it would not be installable on upgrade from 11 and/or executable on buildds/testing/qa systems at the least). So, wouldn't it make sense to go with an (extreme) low priority debconf question defaulting to 'yes, convert now' which [I think] non-experts aren't bothered with and users/systems wanting to opt-out for the moment (like buildds) have a standard way of preseeding rather than inventing a homegrown flag-file and associated machinery? As a bonus, if I had previously decided to forgo the automatic transition for whatever reason (lets say to test build packages on that box) I also have a standard way of triggering the conversion by calling dpkg-reconfigure on usrmerge at leisure before the 13 upgrade. Best regards David Kalnischkies
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