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# IRC, freenode, #hurd, 2012-02-01

    <marcusb> I remember the time when we had a /usr symlink.  Now fedora 17
      will move / to /usr and have /foo symlinks.  :)
    <marcusb> braunr:
      http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/TheCaseForTheUsrMerge
    <marcusb> braunr: fedora and others are merging /bin, /sbin and some other
      into /usr
    <marcusb> braunr: back in 1998 we tried for two years or so to have /usr ->
      ..  in Debian GNU/Hurd, but eventually we gave up on it, because it broke
      some stuff
    <gnu_srs> marcusb: Hi, which one is better (in your opinion): / or /usr?
    <marcusb> gnu_srs: fedora says that using /usr allows better separation of
      distribution files and machine-local files
    <braunr> marcusb: won't it break remote /usr ?
    <marcusb> so you can atomically mount the OS files to /usr
    <marcusb> gnu_srs: but in the end, it's a wash
    <marcusb> personally, I think every package should get its own directory
    <braunr> marcusb: what PATH then ?
    <marcusb> braunr: well, I guess you'd want to assemble a union filesystem
      for a POSIX shell 
    <braunr> marcusb: i don't see what you mean :/
    <braunr> ah this comes from Lennart Poettering
    <marcusb> braunr: check out for example how http://nixos.org/ does it
    <manuel> braunr: something like, union /package1/bin /package2/bin
      /package3/bin for /bin, /package1/lib /package2/lib /package3/lib for
      /lib, etc. I guess
    <braunr> manuel: would that scale well ?
    <marcusb> the idea that there is only one correct binary for each program
      with the name foo is noble, but a complete illusion that hides the
      complexity of the actual configuration management task
    <braunr> marcusb: right