Re: No to StowFS!

[Leonardo Pereira]

I wrote the previous email with haste, so I could not explain my idea
completely and, with your doubts about it, I can explain it better.

I know that there are A LOT of scripts that will need to be CORRECTED.
I do not think that keep a loop symlink of USR->/ is a good idea,
since you will never be able to do a "find / -name *something*". So, we
need to correct those scripts. (* There are scripts with references to
/usr/python or /usr/local/perl)

I know that StowFS doesn't break POSIX, but my idea, as I know, also
doesn't break it. I know that stowfs does part of what I want, but it
still keeping / ugly. What I want is not only organized binaries
packages, but also a clean and with no infinite loop /.

If runpath is better than ld.so.conf, good, It could be used!

I think that I answered almost all mails, now I will explain my idea.

when you build a program to work on an directory, all that you will
need from that package is the binary location. If this package is a
library, you will need the /include, /usr/include, /usr/local/include
to turn packages able to use your library.

So, if that is all that you need, you can do thing on a simpler way,
without need to create unecessary directories on / (/bin, /sbin, /lib).

What you will need is, instead stowfs, that get package/bin and merge
it on /bin, is a translator that gets package/bin and put it on PATH.
The same is valid for /lib and /sbin (I know no variable to set
"include" directories).

the unique directory that I think that will be needed to merge is /etc,
and this is because there are some programs that change configurations
on /etc.

I do not know what are your problems with my idea. There are some Linux-based GNU systems that uses that directory organization.

Thanks, bye.

2006/2/2, Gianluca Guida <glguida@gmail.com>:

Hi,

(CCing to gnu-system-discuss)

On 2/2/06, Leonardo Pereira <leonardolopespereira@gmail.com> wrote:
> I was thinking about why we need to merge all packages on the root
> filesystem is this is not a requirement of POSIX. Posix uses PATH to
> determine where the executable files are, lib directories are setted on
> /etc/ld.so.conf, others directiories of packages are not important to the
> system at all, only to the package, so, it can be on the "package directory"
> inside stow. The unique directory that I think that will need to be merged
> is /include. So, instead a translator that merges all the filesystem, what
> we realy need is a translator to change PATH and emulates ld.so.conf, so,
> you will have a very organized directory structure without break POSIX
> compatibility.

I won't enter the discussion of this, but you can always try your own
idea using unionfs --stow.

Infact, I implemented the whole stowfs as a collection of unionfs
translating basic system directories like /lib, /bin, /etc, et cetera.
Thus, you can decide to merge a singular directory without any
modification to existing code.

I would still like to inform you that my hacks on stowfs stopped
because I failed to get a stowfs'd system booting, so if anyone want
to volunteer on finding a (_working_) way to get that system booted,
(s)he would be my hero.

Gianluca


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It was a type of people I did not know, I found them very strange and
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