I recently tried moving all the files in /bin to /usr/bin and creating a symlink from /bin to /usr/bin instead, as some other distros do. This seems to work without problems until I re-emerge coreutils. The result is that some binaries this package tries to install get deleted instead and replaced by symlinks to /bin/$file, which obviously breaks on such a setup. I think this part of the ebuild is responsible: if [[ ${USERLAND} == "GNU" ]] ; then cd "${D}"/usr/bin dodir /bin # move critical binaries into /bin (required by FHS) local fhs="cat chgrp chmod chown cp date dd df echo false ln ls mkdir mknod mv pwd rm rmdir stty sync true uname" #mv ${fhs} ../../bin/ || die "could not move fhs bins" # move critical binaries into /bin (common scripts) local com="basename chroot cut dir dirname du env expr head mkfifo mktemp readlink seq sleep sort tail touch tr tty vdir wc yes" #mv ${com} ../../bin/ || die "could not move common bins" # create a symlink for uname in /usr/bin/ since autotools require it local x #for x in ${com} uname ; do # dosym /bin/${x} /usr/bin/${x} || die #done else To fix this problem, I propose to check if /bin is a symlink and if it is the case, just do nothing.
no plan on tackling this anytime soon
