[CS-FSLUG] New distro model (towards 0.4)

[Timothy Butler]

>
> And I think RH and deb support belongs in chroot jails.  That should  
> reduce the hosery by a lot.

	How would you maintain compatibility with packages? Especially those  
that list various system libraries as dependencies?

> Ah.  This reminds me of an idea some people tried in a distro years  
> ago, long defunct I think.  They didn't prefer /usr/bin, /usr/lib, / 
> usr/share at all.  They had something like /OpenOffice, and / 
> Firefox, et cetera, a completely revamped filesystem tree.  The  
> problem was no source was written for the new filesystem tree; the  
> problem was solved, reportedly, by a dense forest of symbolic  
> links.  I think that if rpm's and deb's are supported in chroot  
> jails, we come as close as possible to (a) avoiding the symlink- 
> forest problem and (b) supporting existing standards.

	Yes, I think you are right. I seem to remember that.
>
> But the point is that the distro itself doesn't depend on the .pac  
> system.  The distro uses much larger sets.  A single large set is  
> far, far easier to debug than five hundred packages half of which  
> may or may not be present, and half of which may have been installed  
> in many different orders.

	Would the contents still be assigned to "fake" packages so the  
package manager knew what was installed?

> Agreed.  The catch is the delicate Unix-type system hierarchy.  Tell  
> me, you clearly know more OS X than I: my vague impression thus far  
> (I have just a few hours on it tops) has been that OS X has  
> effectively two filesystem hierarchies, the Unix/BSD and the user- 
> oriented.  Is this factual?

	Essentially, yes. /dev, /usr, etc. are there but hidden from the  
user. The key ones for every day activities are Users (like home),  
Applications, Library, Developer (optional) and System. They all do  
essentially what you'd expect, save Library, which is a mix of plugins  
and configuration files. Library also appears in each user's home  
directory for user specific configuration files.

	
>
> I do want to know what happens if one puts an ancient glibc in a  
> chroot with an ancient-glibc-based binary, on a new system.  Does it  
> work?  Does it crash the kernel (a joke, a joke)?  Is there a way to  
> get it to work?

	I have no idea on that one. It sounds interesting. Perhaps you could  
one up it and go for a very light virtualization? :-)

	-Tim

---
Timothy R. Butler | "Bad is so bad, that we cannot but think good
Editor, OfB.biz   | an accident;  good is so  good, that  we feel
tbutler at ofb.biz   | certain that evil could be explained."
timothybutler.us  |                           -- G. K. Chesterton