[arch-dev-public] [RFC] merge /bin, /sbin, /lib into /usr/bin and /usr/lib

[Allan McRae]

On 03/03/12 19:13, Andreas Radke wrote:
> What about the FHS? Why should we do our own thing here again? The bad
> in end user Linux experience is the incompatibility brought by
> such non-standards.

This does not conflict with the FHS.  e.g. the FHS only says /bin should
exist and what files should be found there.   There is nothing saying
that /bin can not be a symlink to /usr/bin.

This actually will result in more cross-distro compatibility as there
will not longer be differences about where files are located.  To pick
an example, /bin/awk will exist and /usr/bin/awk will exist, so either
hardcoded path will work.  Note this currently happens for our gawk
package with symlinks, but only after a bug report asking for us to put
both paths sat in our bug tracker for years...

Now the changes Debian are making is an entirely different story...

> And has this idea anything to do with recent Fedora changes?

It most definitely is influenced by it.  But those of us in favor of
this are not just blindly following Fedora but actually think it is a
good idea.

> IMHO we are now the next big community distro behind the commercial
> players and should raise our voice more often in projects that define
> future standards.

Sure.  Anybody can join the appropriate mailing lists and influence
things like this.  For example, python PEP-394
(http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0394/) was essentially written due
to Arch making python3 the default python.

Allan