The strangeness called `sbin'

[Doug Barton]

On 11/11/2011 03:28, Ed Schouten wrote:
> Hello Doug,
> 
> * Doug Barton <dougb at FreeBSD.org>, 20111110 23:08:

>> This particular proposal though I personally am confused about, and I
>> apologize if I missed something obvious, but what is the value of making
>> this change? I've read the thread so far, and I understand that the
>> hysterical raisins that prompted the creation of sbin may or may not
>> still apply, but I haven't yet understood what we would gain by moving
>> everything.
> 
> Simplicity.

Personally I don't see that as a good enough reason to deal with the
disruption that this change would cause.

> Right now we have binaries executed by users installed in
> five different places. I give bachelor courses on (embedded)
> Linux/FreeBSD systems administration and software development and
> explaining to them why it is done this way is getting tiresome.

If it takes you more than 2 minutes, you're doing it wrong. :)

> But the point is: there are quite some tools in */sbin that should be
> moved to */bin. I can at least point out 15 of them.

Why don't we discuss those specifics first?

> Moving these tools
> around requires the same amount of effort as simply getting rid of sbin.

For those individual tools, yes. But you're discounting the collateral
damage.

> If I have to decide on which of these to work, I'd choose the latter,
> because as far as I know, sbin has no reason to exist anyway.
> 
> Also, it probably causes even less of a burden on our users, because
> `make installworld' will simply force them to migrate, while if we move
> binaries around, we can only hope that the user runs `make delete-old'.

Um, if 'make installworld' were to delete existing stuff that would be
an overwhelming POLA violation.


Doug

-- 

		"We could put the whole Internet into a book."
		"Too practical."

	Breadth of IT experience, and depth of knowledge in the DNS.
	Yours for the right price.  :)  http://SupersetSolutions.com/