Debian Sticking With Merged /usr Plan

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Debian Sticking With Merged /usr Plan

For years Debian developers have been planning for a merged /usr concept where the /{bin,sbin,lib}/ directories becoming symbolic links to /usr/{bin,sbin,lib}/. With the upcoming Debian 10 Buster is the initial step of their plan after it was postponed from Debian Stretch...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Debian-Go-Ahead-Merged-Usr

[Murple]

Arch Linux did this in 2012 (/lib) and 2013 (bin&sbin). Unless I'm missing something, which I usually am

[cybertraveler]

I really like this idea. I think it makes the file system layout cleaner and simpler.

The only objection / concern I had in my mind was regarding /bin (etc) allowing for the creation of a minimal rescue system. However the Freedesktop.org FAQ addresses my concern quite well:

Myth #9: The /usr split is useful to have a minimal rescue system on the root file system, and the rest of the OS on /usr.
Fact: On Fedora the root directory contains ~450MB already. This hasn't been minimal since a long time, and due to today's complex storage and networking technologies it's unrealistic to ever reduce this again. In fact, since the introduction of initrds to Linux the initrd took over the role as minimal rescue system that requires only a working boot loader to be started, but not a full file system.

[bug77]

I really like this idea. I think it makes the file system layout cleaner and simpler.

The file system layout stays the same. It's only about a decade from now when enough programs will be updated that we will get rid of /{bin,sbin,lib}
But this is a necessary first step.

[discordian]

installations with debootstrap (all the debian package builders) still will use the split layout, building with split layout will result in packages that work on both variants.
The decision was previously reversed because packages built on a merged usr, might mess up paths by following symlinks during configuration (file will be installed in /sbin, but the detected & resolved path is /usr/sbin).
Probably a big issue as soon as you use cross-distro or cross-release packages, debian has a few offsprings.

[cybertraveler]

The file system layout stays the same. It's only about a decade from now when enough programs will be updated that we will get rid of /{bin,sbin,lib}
But this is a necessary first step.

I can ignore them. They're nothing to do with the cleanliness and simplicity I had in mind when I made my comment. I personally, don't care if they stay there forever for compatibility with user-data.

It probably wont take long for all of Debian to reference only the /usr/bin/ (etc) data and completely ignore the /bin/ (etc) data. So it really does make the system cleaner and simpler.

[bonob]

The file system layout stays the same. It's only about a decade from now when enough programs will be updated that we will get rid of /{bin,sbin,lib}
But this is a necessary first step.

(Emphasis mine)
Any way to get a feeling about what's the progress already made toward this (very laudable I believe) goal?

[shmerl]

Good. You can migrate existing Debian system to merged state by temporarily installing usrmerge package. I did that on all of my systems and it worked without any problems.

[jabl]

(Emphasis mine)
Any way to get a feeling about what's the progress already made toward this (very laudable I believe) goal?

Probably never. Things like /bin/sh are so deeply embedded into Linux that removing it is more or less impossible. UsrMerge is still good as it get rids of some historical cruft, though.

[Sonadow]

This effectively leaves OpenSUSE as the only remaining major distribution to still not adopt the merged /usr practice.