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