On Mon, Sep 30, 2013 at 2:31 PM, pk <pete...@coolmail.se> wrote: > On 2013-09-30 00:04, Alan McKinnon wrote: > >> It's the general idea that you can leave /usr unmounted until some >> random arb time later in the startup sequence and just expect things to >> work out fine that is broken. >> >> It just happened to work OK for years because nothing happened to use >> the code in /usr at that point in the sequence. More and more we are >> seeing that this is no longer the case. > > So basically it wasn't broke before stuff started to use the code in > /usr. How isn't that breaking? > >> So no-one broke it with a specific commit. It has always been broken by >> design becuase it's a damn stupid idea that just happened to work by >> fluke. IT and computing is rife with this kind of error. > > If what you are saying is true then *everything* is broken "by design" > if something isn't available at boot time (may be /usr, may be /var or > whatever).
Let me make an analogy between programs and recipes. You see, a program is a lot like a recipe. It's a set of instructions for a computer to follow. And if you have a recipe where if you follow it, and anyone that eats the food says it tastes good, then you have a good recipe. Let me make an analogy between a restaurant franchise and a distribution. You see, a franchise is a set of instructions for a restaurateur to follow. A lot of those instructions are recipes. They tell the restaurateur how to cook foods. But not all of those instructions are. Some of them are instructions on the ideal conditions to cook. Or some of them are instructions on how to get materials, or how to talk to customers, or how to keep employees happy. Now if you follow those instructions, and have the right resources, you get to create a restaurant. In the same way, a distribution can be thought of as a set of instructions. If you follow those instructions, and have the right resources, you get to install a lot of programs on a computer. If everybody that follows the instructions on a recipe creates a food that a lot of people think tastes great, then you have a great recipe. And if everybody that follows the instuctions on a franchise creates a restaurant that a lot of customers buy from and think the food is great, then you have a great franchise. Now let's say you have a franchise with very specific instructions to buy ingredients from the nearest organic store. Now for many restaurants that follow these instructions, they end up with great food that makes an okay amount of money. But in some cities the organic store doesn't have very good lettuce. Or the carrots are too expensive. Or there isn't any organic store at all, so the restaurant owner has to go to the next city and waste a lot of time and money to get eggs. So those restaurants fail. But for many restaurants the instructions work. Now the restaurant owners get together and complain that their restaurant isn't working. Why? they ask. It's because the head franchise added pizza to the menu! The menu was working fine without the pizza, but when they added pizza it became to expensive or impractical to turn a profit. They might say that the franchise was broken by the pizza. But many restaurant owners do fine by pizza. In fact for many of them it's their hottest and most profitable product. You see, the problem isn't the inclusion of a specific recipe. The addition of pizza didn't break the restaurant. Nor did the addition of burgers, or coke, or fries or whatever. The problem was with instructions on how to manage the recipe ingredients. In short, while they were practical for a lot of restaurant owners, they weren't practical _in general_. The instructions could be better improved by saying something like "buy ingredients from stores that give you this much return," or "buy ingredients from our approved suppliers since they give the best return on your money". If those instructions were given instead of just vaguely saying to purchase from an organic store, they'd have better control over the quality and profitability of the restaurants. And this is something like what is wrong with /usr. The individual programs may be good. Many parts of the system taken together may be good. But the instructions on how to manage programs going to /usr or to / is too vague. There is no definitive quality control behind it. Even if you follow the instructions, as best as you can, you will end up making stupid decisions for the distribution. Likewise with the franchise restaurants. The individual foods may be good. Many of the instructions on managing people, foods, customers, may be good. But the whole concept of "purchase from some a supplier with undefined levels of cost and quality" is NOT a good instruction. Maybe that works for a lot of restaurants, but as a general rule it doesn't work for all of them. If you follow it to the letter, you will end up making stupid decisions for the restaurant. And here's your problem. The franchise instructions aren't supposed to just "work for a lot of restaurants". They're supposed to work for all of them. Likewise with the distribution. the distribution packages, rules, settings, etc, aren't supposed to be tailored for your own personal setup. They're supposed to work for anybody for whom the distribution is a target. You might want to say that maybe udev, or maybe this driver, or maybe this service, or that hardware breaks FHS and therefore Gentoo. But that's the wrong way of looking at it. when the important parts of something being boot critical depends on the system. -- This email is: [ ] actionable [ ] fyi [ ] social Response needed: [ ] yes [ ] up to you [ ] no Time-sensitive: [ ] immediate [ ] soon [ ] none
