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Implementing /Usr Merge in Alpine
- charcircuit 1y ago>and non-merged installations upgrading to it will break. This is unacceptable. Updating your operating system should not cause it to break. Alpine should be responsible for the migration and not forcing users to do manual work else breaking their machines.
- Bender 1y agoThis or at very least wait until a major version update like 4.0 so that if an installation breaks it's likely during a major uplift or refresh or greenfield deployment.
- seemaze 1y agoI don't think Alpine Linux 4.0 is scheduled for release until after Python 4.0
- thyristan 1y agoAlpine isn't a distro one would upgrade. It is usually used for throwaway containers, so the upgrade path is clear: throw the old one away, create a new one.
- Bender 1y agoI have Alpine installed on many physical and virtual machines all around the USA. I know I am not alone on this. Some VPS providers also offer it as an installation option and some VM's are long-lived.
- seemaze 1y agoThere's at least two of us! I've upgraded through more than 10 releases on some boxes. I run Alpine on metal, and I approve TFA. Thank you to the alpine team for your transparency and your efforts!
- ratrocket 1y agoMake that three :). Alpine is my "daily driver" on my laptop. I have several very long lived cloud VMs running it too. I know it has the reputation as "just" a container OS, but it's a pretty regular Linux distro. I think it's a joy to use on a daily basis! (I also believe it can't be that uncommon to daily drive it.)
- Fwirt 1y agoI run Alpine as the OS on my home router. It's probably the most comprehensible distribution, I feel like it's actually possible for a mere mortal to understand the system. There are dozens of us!
- talideon 1y agoThe only way it can break is if you skip straight to forward to a release that no longer contains the tooling allowing you to make the transition cleanly. They outlined this is the article.
- Arnavion 1y agoAnd updating Alpine to a new release is already a manual action.
- charcircuit 1y agoEven if the tooling is available they require you to run it automatically instead of the operating system handling this for you. Your operating system will break if you don't take a manual action.
- noAnswer 1y agoSimply do the merge. > Alpine should be responsible "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND
- charcircuit 1y agoThat is not an excuse for them to purposefully break people's computer. The benefit of computers is all of this can be automated or walk users through how to fix things. But for some reason Linux distros keep breaking people's operating systems and then take no responsibility in fixing people's systems. These kind of actions hurt the adoption and trust people have in these projects.
- GuinansEyebrows 1y agohere's a refund :)
- Bender 1y agoI feel like they jumped the gun on this article. 3.22 does not have a merge-usr package/script in http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.22/main http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.22/main and 3.23 does not yet exist otherwise I would test the merge script right now on a throw-away VM. Looking at the merge request it appears the Finish step is not yet completed or the pipeline was skipped or I am reading this incorrectly. Perhaps they are just missing an estimated deployment date in the article.
- Arnavion 1y agoAs TFA says, currently the usr-merge and the script for it is only in Edge, and it will come to stable in 3.23
- Bender 1y agoI've read the article 5 times and I can almost interpret it that way in the how to migrate section which mentions 3.23. The Timeline section has no mention of dates. I would like to see a table of dates or at least an Oompa Loompa song.
- Arnavion 1y agoThere's no need to interpret anything. It's spelled out in the list in the Timeline section already. Point 1 tells you it's in Edge. Point 2 tells you that stable will be able to start migrating with 3.23, ie when current Edge becomes stable.
- Bender 1y agoI am not seeing the same thing as you. The timeline section says that if I install 3.23 it will be user-merged and if I upgrade from an older release I wont be forced until 3.26. There are no dates. A timeline will have times and/or dates. Perhaps it is a CDN caching issue.
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- felixgallo 1y agoMan, freebsd is just so clean and sensible by comparison to linux these days: https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?hier https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?hier
- elitistphoenix 1y agoDoes the 2nd and 3rd sentences not read right or is confusing to anyone else?
- Arnavion 1y agoI don't see anything wrong or confusing in them. On running the merge-usr script, the contents of /lib will be moved to /usr/lib, and /lib will become a symlink to /usr/lib. The same will happen with /bin (merged with /usr/bin) and /sbin (merged with /usr/sbin). /usr/bin and /usr/sbin will remain separate directories as they are today (and as /bin and /sbin are today). Some other distros have also merged /usr/sbin into /usr/bin, but Alpine is not doing that for now, as it's still being discussed by the FHS.
- M95D 1y ago[flagged]
- akerl_ 1y agoThis comment has peak "old man yells at cloud" energy.