[Discuss] Debian 12 vs. WSL 1

[grg]

On Tue, Jun 20, 2023 at 02:08:19PM -0500, Derek Martin wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 17, 2023 at 12:47:31PM -0400, grg wrote:
> > I think the usrmerge proponents claim that it's working for you not because
> > it was some trivial/"obvious" tweak by one person at one point beyond your
> > event horizon, but rather because developers/package maintainers exert
> > *constant* effort to keep it working for you.
> 
> So to be clear, I was talking about a time long before the merge was a
> thing, so no, it was not due to the effort of ANY developers or
> maintainers at all.

I believe you've got this backwards.  again, ongoing effort is required of
developers/maintainers *before* usrmerge; that particular ongoing effort is
not required of them after usrmerge; eliminating that ongoing effort is the
whole point of usrmerging.  your talking about a time before usrmerge means
you're talking about a time when the ongoing effort was required of them.
so yes, your system "just working" for you at that time was indeed due to
the effort of MANY developers and maintainers making it so.


> Bear in mind, this didn't just affect YOU, it probably affected a lot of
> people, multiplying the cost immesurably.

I never claimed it only affected "ME" (and in fact my last email discussed
a plurality of users affected).  and to be fair, the cost probably is
literally measurable (and not even that hard to estimate).  but notably,
evidence points to it having been transparent for the overwhelming majority
of users.  so, sucks to be me in this case.  you said you "noticed" it;
maybe it sucks to be you too, if noticing things is bothersome.
(personally, I like noticing things, so I wouldn't have found that bit to
be sucky.)


> I'm very familiar with the class of problems the merge is meant to
> solve, and Rich's arguments neither told me anything I didn't already
> know nor convince me that this does anything sufficiently worthwhile
> to justify the change.

again, I don't believe usrmerge was meant to solve any problem you (or
rich) have, I believe usrmerge was pushed by package/distro maintainers to
solve *their* problems.  I find it quite likely that it achieved that goal.


> I don't know yet whether it's going to affect my WSL installations,
> which I use, and therefore update, only infrequently--but probably at
> least some of them.

if I were you I'd save rich's solution somewhere you can find it when you get
around to upgrading your WSL, and possibly even thank rich for sharing it.

--grg