a few short observations on latest BB

[Rob Landley]

On Wednesday 01 March 2006 12:30 pm, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
> > I have no idea what it's for either.  (I recently made it so
> > defconfig doesn't select that one, by the way, since it says not to
> > unless you know you need it...)
>
>   actually, i can sort of understand that selection's value in
> include/applets.h:
>
> #ifdef CONFIG_INSTALL_NO_USR
> # define _BB_DIR_USR_BIN _BB_DIR_BIN
> # define _BB_DIR_USR_SBIN _BB_DIR_SBIN
> #endif
>
> all it's doing (apparently) is redefining the destination install
> directories from /usr/bin and /usr/sbin to, respectively, /bin and
> /sbin, and leaving /usr open.  i can *imagine* this would be useful if
> you wanted to reserve /usr for an NFS mount or something.

Oh I know what it does, I just don't know why it was put in.

This big is the install my Firmware Linux script does to link the relevant 
busybox apps into /tools:

for i in `sed 's ^.*/  ' busybox.links`
  do ln -s busybox "/tools/bin/$i"
done

And in my firmware thing I wrote up a couple pages about why I collapsed 
together /bin with /usr/bin, /sbin with /usr/sbin, and /lib with /usr/lib.  
I'm not saying it's a _bad_ thing.  (The separation is a historical relic 
from when Ken and Dennis overflowed their first RK05 disk pack in 1971 and 
had to start putting OS binaries in the partition containing the users' home 
directories.)

I just don't know what problems the option was meant to address...

> it's just that the help screen for that option doesn't even give you a
> *hint* as to what the selection means or why you might want to use it,
> that's all.  from a newbie's perspective, adding a couple sentences
> there probably wouldn't hurt.

Agreed. :)

> rday

-- 
Never bet against the cheap plastic solution.