Re: Hurd FS hierarchy (was Re: LD_LIBRARY_PATH troubles)

[Jeroen Dekkers]

On Mon, May 20, 2002 at 12:50:08AM -0700, Grant Bowman wrote:
> * Richard Kreuter <kreuter@ausar.rutgers.edu> [020512 22:44]:
> > GNU specific annex:
> > 
> > 6.2  GNU
> > 
> > This is the annex for the GNU operating system.  We sometimes refer
> > to this as the GNU/Hurd system, in cases where it is necessary to
> > distinguish the GNU system from other systems that use large amounts
> > of GNU software.
> 
> Good, but I think this does not acknowledge that GNU/Linux is still a
> GNU system.

If you want to start a GNU/Linux vs. Linux discussion on that
mailinglist be my guest.
 
> > The GNU system is special compared to other UNIX-like operating
> > systems in the way it treats the filesystem namespace. The filesystem
> > namespace is very flexible, you can do anything with it what you
> > want. That's why it is reasonable to specify where you should find
> > directories and files, but not the way those directories and files
> > should get there.
> > 
> > As a rule, distributors who wish to maintain compatibility between
> > their distributions of GNU/Hurd, GNU/Linux, or other systems may
> > maintain symbolic links to files whose locations on GNU systems differ
>                                                       GNU/Hurd?
> > from their locations on other systems.  This accomodates programs with
> > "hard-coded" filenames. For example, files that should be found under
> > /libexec may be symbolic links, or may be the targets of symbolic
> > links located under /sbin, /bin, and so forth.
> 
> Generally, I think GNU alone is ambiguous and shouldn't be used given
> the climate today.

A climate is never a reason for not doing the right thing. The only
reason the name GNU/Hurd exists is because GNU might be ambigous, but
the paragraph before it already speaks about GNU/Linux so that doesn't
really matter. We could say "Hurd-based GNU system" in the first line
to clear everything up.

Jeroen Dekkers
-- 
Jabber ID: jdekkers@jabber.org  IRC ID: jeroen@openprojects
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