[Discuss] Debian 12 vs. WSL 1

[invalid at pizzashack.org (Derek Martin)]

On Tue, Jun 20, 2023 at 09:31:26PM -0400, grg wrote:
> > 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

Not really, no.  In 1994--at the time that I spoke of--Linux, and
hence Linux package managers, barely even existed, and some
distributions didn't even have one.   Linux didn't even make it into
our building until 1996, and then only as a skunkworks project.  At
that time, Linux was a dirty word to most tech managers.  So Linux, or
its package managers, are not really relevant to the point.  The Unix
vendors--who ARE relevant--by and large gave zero consideration to
where their competitors were putting things (except maybe to ensure
they were different), and actively tried to make interoperability with
other OSes harder (or ideally impossible), for vendor lock-in reasons.

So again, NO, when my environment caused me no headaches in regard to
the issues Rich described, it's absolutely not because any developer
or package maintainer was looking out for me.  Cuz that DID NOT
HAPPEN.  It's entirely because my team did a good job setting up the
environment and planning ahead to address these types of issues.  That
may or may not have included creating symlinks.  And probably also we
got lucky to some extent that our use cases were amenable to that ease
of management.

But you seem convinced that this is only about package management, and
it's not.  Or maybe you think I was only discussing the merge
specifically from Debian's perspective... I wasn't.  The issues Rich
spoke of aren't called out specifically in the link he posted, nor its
parent document from the Fedora project, but they are covered broadly
in both, under the header of "compatibility with other Unixes."  It's
those issues (and a number of related others) that refers to.

> 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.

For what it's worth, Rich and I have been arguing about this kind of
stuff for probably about 20 years, although not much lately.  I think
that Rich is well aware that I appreciate his contribution to the
list, and that I respect his talents and perspective (or else I
wouldn't have asked for it).  Despite that, we almost never agree
about anything, and when we do I have to question whether the universe
is imploding. =8^)

I'm very unlikely to actually use his solution--given how I use WSL
I'll most likely just reinstall as that will likely be less hassle for
me, if I need to.  So I feel no compunction over not thanking him for
it.  I was always much more interested in whether this change had
compelling merit,  and remain unconvinced that it does.  I did admit
that in more chaotic environments some of that stuff is harder, and I
think Rich knows that *I* know that his environment IS...  Mine were
not, and that certainly colors our perpsectives.

-- 
Derek D. Martin    http://www.pizzashack.org/   GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02
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