Bug#1050001: Unwinding directory aliasing [and 3 more messages]
On Sun, 27 Aug 2023 at 11:30, Matthew Vernon <matthew@debian.org> wrote:
>
> Dear Luca,
>
> On 27/08/2023 03:16, Luca Boccassi wrote:
>
> [things]
>
> You've already been asked by a couple of people to moderate your tone in
> this thread. I appreciate there is a lot of frustration around
> /usr-merge, but your contributions are not helping with that at all. Nor
> do they help us have a constructive discussion.
Constructive discussions about past events need to be based on facts
and evidence. Both are conspicuously absent from the bug submitter's
messages. Without any of that, there was never any possibility that
this bug could be in any way constructive since the moment it was
opened, long before I first replied.
> The DEP-17 work continues whilst this discussion is ongoing; this
> discussion is not delaying that work.
>
> I think it is fair to say that when ctte decided on /usr-merge it was
> expected that a) the process would be reasonably straightforward and b)
> dpkg could be taught to understand directory aliasing, so we would not
> have to be doing things "behind dpkg's back", as it were.
Sure, but then it turned out that package maintainers are not only
allowed to ignore the CTTE and its formal decisions, but can also
actively block them in their packages. How could responsibility of
that be assigned to anybody but those who chose to do that completely
eludes me - and yet, that's exactly what the bug submitter does.
> I think the need for a releases-long moratorium on moving files and the
> volume and depth of technical work represented by DEP17 demonstrate that
> those expectations turned out not to be met.
>
> Given that, it seems to me that a) warnings that "it's not that simple &
> easy" were not FUD and describing them thus is unhelpful b) it's
> reasonable to at least ask the question "given what we know now, are we
> still sure this is the correct approach?"
a) except that warnings weren't as mild and meek as "it's not that
simple", we were clearly told everything would break left and right,
and yet that didn't happen. Sure, dpkg has annoying bugs that need
workarounds, but that's hardly surprising given its situation. But
these are all packaging-only issues that affect some distribution
maintainers for some package builds and maintenance tasks, and that's
about it. No installation is affected. No user is affected. No
external/third party developer is affected. So, yes, all of that was
and still is FUD.
b) no, in August 2023 it is very much not reasonable, and no fully
informed and evidence-based good faith discussion would ever ask
something like that. The reasonable questions to ask in August 2023
are along the lines of "what's the best way to work around those dpkg
bugs and lift the moratorium?", which is what we are doing in actual
good faith discussions elsewhere, with very productive results.
> Any such consideration must be mindful of the fact that the majority of
> Debian installs are now /usr-merged, which means that the complexity of
> unwinding such installs has to be a heavy factor in thinking about
> alternative approaches.
>
> I'm hopeful, but not certain, that the DEP17 work will get us to a
> coherent state again by foxy (which still feels a long time off); I
> don't think we should underestimate the work to be done in properly
> completing /usr-merge.
>
> This discussion has, I think, been broadly useful in clarifying some
> folks' thinking in this area. I would very much like if we could keep it
> focused on the technical matters.
I honestly cannot see how there can be any useful technical discussion
about a completely evidence-free proposal to move to a symlinks-farm
layout in 2023, with all the already well-known wider context that has
been explained multiple times. The useful and productive and
high-quality technical discussions are happening elsewhere.
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