[haiku-development] Re: Question about /system and /boot/system

  • From: Ingo Weinhold <ingo_weinhold@xxxxxx>
  • To: haiku-development@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Wed, 02 Mar 2011 11:44:16 +0100

On 2011-03-02 at 10:45:00 [+0100], Oliver Tappe <zooey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On 2011-03-02 at 00:04:11 [+0100], Truls Becken <truls.becken@xxxxxxxxx> 
> wrote:
> > In a thread back in january [1], I made a suggestion about letting
> > /boot/system and /boot/common be both the package-fs mount point and
> > at the same time hold a couple of "real" directories (packages,
> > settings). I don't know if anybody noticed and considered it as an
> > option back then, but it might solve some problems.
> 
> When you suggested that, I didn't pick up on the notion of just making a 
> few folders "real" in that scenario. I apparently thought you were 
> suggesting a union-fs like
> approach (which I find problematic because of the awkward "shadowing" 
> effect of written/copied files).
> 
> But what you mentioned above can be implemented just by letting packagefs 
> automatically bind-mount the "packages" and "settings" folders.
> 
> > As far as I can see, it has these (dis)advantages:
> > 
> > + Good for backward compatibility
> 
> + Simplifies the conversion of ported software to packages a lot.
> 
> > + Short (sane) paths to e.g. /boot/system/apps
> > + No need for B_SYSTEM_PACKAGES_CONTENTS
> > - Confusing to have package contents mangled with actual folders
> > - Can't use both package based and manually organized files, as in [2]
> 
> Yep, we could solve the latter by explicitly providing an 'old-school' or  
> 'legacy' folder (or whatever else would be a good name for it). That could 
> both be used for
> testing software during development and for installing software that isn't 
> available as hpkg.
> 
> I personally find the approach of mixing packages with a set of writable 
> folders not very confusing, but quite appealing, actually :-) After all, 
> the settings folder has to
> be populated from the hpkg-files anyway, so packagefs would have to write 
> outside of its container in the other (current) scenario.
> 
> And when working on porting the development tools over to the current 
> structure, I did find the long paths quite awkward indeed ...
> 
> Any opinions?

Sounds interesting. It's a bit ugly that the packagefs volume would have to 
know directories from under where it is mounted, but I guess we can live with 
that.

The boot loader should also be visible, I guess, or be moved to another 
directory ("boot"?) that also "shines through".

> P.S.: I know I might be getting on people's nerves with my constant 
> questions about the folder structure, but these are important decisions and 
> changing them around at a
> later stage (once software has been packaged) would be a lot of work.

Indeed, and otherwise people would seriously get on your nerves when you're 
done and hadn't discussed things beforehand. :-P

CU, Ingo

Other related posts: