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List:       debian-devel
Subject:    Re: merged /usr vs. symlink farms
From:       Philip Hands <phil () hands ! com>
Date:       2021-08-26 11:50:05
Message-ID: 87v93sa0ia.fsf () hands ! com
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Luca Boccassi <bluca@debian.org> writes:

> On Thu, 2021-08-26 at 12:16 +0200, Simon Richter wrote:
>> Hi,
>> 
>> On 8/26/21 8:38 AM, Marco d'Itri wrote:
>> 
>> > > By my definition, these have never been working correctly, but
>> > > semantics I guess.
>> 
>> > It is not semantics. You keep saying that countless Debian and Ubuntu
>> > systems are not working correctly, but since this obviously does not
>> > reflect the experience of the owners of these systems then just about
>> > everybody will believe that you are wrong about merged-/usr.
>> 
>> Ideally the question whether a system works correctly would be a 
>> technical, not a political one that is based on a majority vote of 
>> people who do not look behind the facade.
>> 
>>         Simon
>
> Precisely - and the correct technical question is, how many bug reports
> were opened by users?

While I'm sympathetic with the argument that a lack of bug reports
suggests that the theoretical problems (that I hope we all agree, do
exist) seem not to be exhibiting themselves in the wild, it is very far
from proof.

If some random file disappears on your system one day, what happens?

Most likely, nothing, and you never notice.

Possibly, your system starts to misbehave.  What do you do then?

  If you're a naive user, such as a recent arrival from Windows, then
  misbehaviour is something that you've been trained to expect and you
  install from scratch.  The idea of reporting a bug never enters your
  head.

  If you're aware that this sort of thing really should not happen, then
  what happens next is probably down to how busy you are.  If you're
  busy, you probably check your SMART stats, and having convinced
  yourself that the disks are OK, either restore from backup and check
  for what ealse is missing, or use debsums to see the extent of the
  damage and reinstall a package or two.  Again, since you're only
  trying to get back to work, and didn't track down the cause, no bug
  report.

The only bug reports you're going to get about this are either going to
be the useless "Something didn't work" bugs, that I doubt would ever get
tied to this cause, or the ones submitted by experienced, diligent, and
time-rich bug reporters (which is a rather rare combination).

The fact that we don't see bug reports should surprise no one.

Cheers, Phil.
-- 
|)|  Philip Hands  [+44 (0)20 8530 9560]  HANDS.COM Ltd.
|-|  http://www.hands.com/    http://ftp.uk.debian.org/
|(|  Hugo-Klemm-Strasse 34,   21075 Hamburg,    GERMANY

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