Bug#996833: Please include information whether system is usrmerged or not

[Michael Biebl <biebl@debian.org>]

Hi Sandro

Am 19.10.21 um 16:35 schrieb Sandro Tosi:
> control: tags -1 +moreinfo
>
> > given the decisions by the CTTE to go with a merged-/usr file system
> > layout, I think it would be useful (at least during the transition
> > phase), if reportbug included the information whether a system is
> > already using such a file system layout or not.
> >
> > reportbug already includes:
> >
> > Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
> >
> > One can sort of deduce this information from the above line (on a
> > merged-/usr system /bin/sh typically points to /usr/bin/dash), and most
> > shells are typically installed in /bin, so I could understand if you
> > reject this bug report.
>
> we'd be happy to add this, but (as for other "recent" additions to the
> system info section, such as what init system is in use) the burden of
> coming up with a good/valid heuristics is on the requestor (simply
> because we may not be in a good position to know all the intricacies).
>
> While a MR implementing this is of course welcome, you can also simply
> give us a good way to determine if it's usrmerged or not and we can
> add that information; an reference implementation (still using the
> init system example from above) is
> https://salsa.debian.org/reportbug-team/reportbug/-/blob/master/reportbug/utils.py#L1220-1241

I'd make this pretty straighforward and simply check if
/lib is a symlink to /usr/lib and
/bin a symlink to /usr/bin

I don't think there is a need to check all other /lib* variantions and 
/sbin as well to reliably detect a merged system.

Marco, if you disagree, please chime in here.


> Since we also try to keep that section of the bug report contained in
> size, do we need to add a new line for all bug reports? do we want to
> start first with only adding a line if a system is usr-merged (which
> is the least common case)? can we merge this information with another
> sys-info line already present in every bug report?

Given that since two stable releases, we are defaulting to merged-/usr 
for new installations, it's hard to tell, what the more common case is.
It might already be the case that we have more merged-/usr systems out 
there then unmerged.

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