I’m curious how software can be created and evolve over time. I’m afraid that at some point, we’ll realize there are issues with the software we’re using that can only be remedied by massive changes or a complete rewrite.

Are there any instances of this happening? Where something is designed with a flaw that doesn’t get realized until much later, necessitating scrapping the whole thing and starting from scratch?

    • z3bra@lemmy.sdf.org
      31·
      10 months ago

      $PATH shouldn’t even be a thing, as today disk space is cheap so there is no need to scatter binaries all over the place.

      Historically, /usr was created so that you could mount a new disk here and have more binaries installed on your system when the disk with /bin was full.

      And there are just so many other stuff like that which doesn’t make sense anymore (/var/tmp comes to mind, /opt, /home which was supposed to be /usr but name was already taken, etc …).

        • z3bra@lemmy.sdf.org
          1·
          10 months ago

          Today’s software would probably break, but my point is that $PATH is a relic from ancient times that solved a problem we don’t have anymore.

        • z3bra@lemmy.sdf.org
          1·
          10 months ago

          You missed my point. The reason $PATH exists in the first place is because binaries were too large to fit on a single disk, so they were scattered around multiple partitions (/bin, /sbin, /usr/bin, etc…). Now, all your binaries can easily fit on a single partition (weirdly enough, /usr/bin was chosen as the “best candidate” for it), but we still have all the other locations, symlinked there. It just makes no sense.

          As for the override mechanism you mention, there are much better tools nowadays to do that (overlayfs for example).

          This is what plan9 does for example. There is no need for $PATH because all binaries are in /bin anyways. And to override a binary, you simply “mount” it over the existing one in place.

            • z3bra@lemmy.sdf.org
              1·
              10 months ago

              By mounting the binary over, I mean something like a bind mount. But in your case of a wrapper script, it doesn’t apply indeed. Though in this case I would simply name the script steam-launcher and call it a day 🙂

              Having multiple executables with the same name and relying on $PATH and absolute paths feels hackish to me, but that’s only a matter of preference at this point.

                • z3bra@lemmy.sdf.org
                  2·
                  10 months ago

                  Right now overlays requires elevated privilèges, but ideally it shouldn’t. Rewriting the Linux kernel to implement per user namespaces like plan9 does would allow unprivileged actions from any user (just like if any user was sitting in a container, overlayed from the base system).

                  I know we’re not there, and that’s not the direction development is going, but this thread is about dreams, right ? 😉

                  About the XDG specs, they serve a totally different purpose so they’re out of the discussion IMO. I’m not advocating against env variables. Just $PATH which is a workaround as I see it, but your mileage may vary. As for your “issue” with steam, of course this is the best way to solve it. Because of today’s OS limitation. My point is that with a better designed namespacing implementation, there would be more elegant solutions to solve it (and would get rid of the need to use LD_LIBRARY_PATH too, or literally any *_PATH env variable)

            • z3bra@lemmy.sdf.org
              1·
              10 months ago

              I’m not saying we should get rid of $PATH right now. My point is that it was created to solve a problem we don’t have anymore (not enough disk capacity), but we still keep it out of habit.

              As a reminder, the discussion is about what should be rewritten from scratch in linux. And IMO, we should get rid of $PATH as there are better options.