From: Trans <transfire@...>
Date: 2005-10-04T04:01:47+09:00
Subject: Re: Gems is over engineered


Eivind Eklund wrote:

> Actually, there's some reasoning behind the madness:
> - We try to support users that want read-only for certain directories
> - We try to make it possible for users to share as much as possible between
> different architectures

I realize there's method behind tha madness. But I would point you to
Gobolinux for interesting couter-argumetns.

> lib is by definition architecture specific (unshared) and can be read only,
> while share is architecture neutral and possible to share. Both should be
> able to be read-only except during install. Data that vary should be put in
> /var.

Hmm... by that definition then most of site_ruby should be in share/.

> This was originally intended to protect the share/ and lib/ directories from
> corruption due to the amount of changes. Nowadays, it is more important that
> it let the user take backup of static data (lib/, share/) only occasionally
> and varying data frequently, and can have the varying data on different
> kinds of media (e.g, RAID-0+1 instead of RAID-0 with backup).

Though I really wonder how many people do such a thing. Handling high
traffic/shared  areas like home/ and var/ separately is a no brainer,
but splitting hairs over share/ and lib/, not to mention the local
variety. it gets to point where the "solution" is more trouble then the
problem.  For some time now I've been convinced that we need to move
beyond these location based catagories --doing so would allows much
more fluid constraints and access.

> There's reasons for each and every one of the directory recommendations,
> some important, some not so important. I'd be happy to go through them with
> you (tomorrow or tuesday) if you're so inclined. I don't know of any central
> repository for the information.

A rundown posted here ceratainly might be helpful to many. I'm familiar
with the much of it, I've quickly read over the FHS. And I am a Debian
user. I just think it's getting dated. Actually I worry about MS' WinFS
for Linux' sake. It may be behind schedule, but that's what MS is
working on to be sure.

T.