Re: Anything to do?

[Gianluca Guida]

On 7/22/05, Richard M. Stallman <address@hidden> wrote:
>     I meant to copy packages trees into the /stow directory.
> 
> Why copy anything into anywhere?

This is just an option. Just creating a symlink into stow is enough.

>  I can't see why copying files is
> needed for package installation on the Hurd.  My original proposal was
> that /bin and other such dirs would be constructed virtually by a
> special file system handler.  Instead of putting a symlink into /bin,
> you just change the data from which the contents of /bin are computed.
> 
> Why not do it this way?
 
That's exactly what it does. Perhaps we're misunderstanding about
what I meant to be copying, so I'll be more explicit and make some
example.

The stowfs actually works like this:

# settrans /bin /hurd/unionfs -m bin --stow=/stow 
(imagine this for all meaning directories like /lib, eventually /etc, et cetera)

This makes /bin (and the others) to be handled by the stowfs. To be accurate,
/bin will contains all files (and eventually subdirectories) contained in 
/stow/*/bin (a thread automatically updates entries when removing or adding
new entries in the /stow directory). 

This is exactly what was discussed in this mailing list, and I guess
it's what your
idea of stowfs was about. Am I right?

Now, by "copying" I meant to do something like this:

# cp /packages/emacs-21 /stow

that is, to _copy_ the package into /stow (that is, having a real directory
into /stow instead of making a symlink). This was only the main way I used to
test the stowfs support (is more interesting on a debugging POV since files
are more slowly added into the union and I could test better the support for 
dynamic insertion of directories). _BUT_ symlink are supported too, that is we
_can_ install emacs into the system just by doing:

# ln -s /packages/emacs-21 /stow/

So I am not talking about copying things to /bin, I was just talking
about the ways
to modify the /stow dir.

Hope this clarifies everything,
Gianluca

-- 
It was a type of people I did not know, I found them very strange and
they did not inspire confidence at all. Later I learned that I had been
introduced to electronic engineers.
                                                           E. W. Dijkstra