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roelschroeven on April 6, 2022 | parent | context | favorite | on: Debian still having trouble with merged /usr

I must be missing something, because I don't see how a link farm doesn't have the exact same problem.

In the case of symlinked directories we have:

  - the binary lives in /usr/bin/python3
  - /bin is a symlink to /usr/bin
  - /bin/python3 therefore refers to /usr/bin/python3

We can use either /usr/bin/python3 or /bin/python3.

In the case of a link farm we have:

  - the binary lives in /usr/bin/python3
  - /bin/python3 is a symlink to /usr/bin/python3

Again we can use either /usr/bin/python3 or /bin/python3.

As far as I can see, both methods allow insufficiently careful developers to hardcode the wrong paths. What am I missing?

caylus on April 6, 2022 [–]

> - /bin/python3 is a symlink to /usr/bin/python3

You don't symlink everything in /usr/bin to /bin, just "all regular files that have traditionally been in /bin" (per the article).

python3 has not traditionally been in /bin, so /bin/python3 would not be linked.

roelschroeven on April 7, 2022 | [–]

Ah, yes, thanks, that clears up things.

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