[oe] /usr merge, stateless systems and atomic updates w/ OpenEmbedded?

[Leon Woestenberg]

Hello all,

more and more I am liking the approach taken by SuSE snapper (incremental
but atomic updates using light-weight snapshots on BTRFS) and OSTree
(incremental atomic updates using a GIT like approach on the source, bsdiff
for delta updates).

These are targeting -- but also require -- systems that use the "/usr
merge" approach, which is a bit controversial, but seems to fit many
today's use cases; embedded, containers etc.

GNOME Continuous uses OpenEmbedded with OStree.
Automotive Grade Linux has started to use Yocto with OSTree.

Looking back in the mailing lists, I have seen interest and activities in
and around OpenEmbedded Core since 2013 to support /usr merge, but I am
unaware of any upstream support for this, or distro's that implement it. Am
I missing something?

Are there any developers here who do use OpenEmbedded with a /usr merge
approach?

Regards,

Leon.

Some random links I came across:
http://lists.openembedded.org/pipermail/openembedded-core/2014-December/099616.html
https://patchwork.openembedded.org/patch/89069/
http://lists.openembedded.org/pipermail/openembedded-core/2013-August/083595.html
https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/TheCaseForTheUsrMerge/
https://patchwork.openembedded.org/patch/111129/