## What is "merged `/usr`"
-"Merged `/usr`" describes a possible future standard directories scheme in which the `/{bin,sbin,lib*}/` directories have been made superfluous through replacing them by symlinks to their `/usr` equivalents (/usr/{bin,sbin,lib*}).
+"Merged `/usr`" describes a possible future standard directories scheme in which the `/{bin,sbin,lib*}/` directories have been made superfluous through replacing them by symlinks to their `/usr` equivalents (`/usr/{bin,sbin,lib*}`).
The motivation to get Debian systems to converge towards such a scheme is vastly documented elsewhere ([FDO's TheCaseForTheUsrMerge][0], [wiki.d.o UsrMerge][1]) but can be summarized as the following points:
* having separate `/` and `/usr` filesystems has been useful in the past for booting without initramfs onto a minimal root filesystem that carried just enough to mount the `/usr` filesystem later in the boot process. Given the evolution of physical hosts' capabilities, initramfs'es have been default in Debian (and elsewhere) for a long time, and most systems no longer have an intermediate state during boot in which they have only `/`, but not `/usr`, mounted.
It can be summarized by the following table:
```
-| | Host types that are allowed | Are merged-/usr | Official packages are built on | Packages built on … can break on the other |
-| Codename | classical hosts | merged-/usr hosts | symlinks allowed | classical hosts | merged-/usr hosts | classical hosts | merged-/usr hosts |
-|----------|-----------------|-------------------|------------------|—----------------|-------------------|---------------------|----------------------|
-| none | yes | no | no | yes | no | yes | yes |
-| weak | yes | yes | yes | yes | no | no | yes |
-| middle | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | no | no |
-| hard | yes | yes | yes | no | yes | no | no |
-| all | no | yes | yes | no | yes | yes | no |
+| | Host types that are allowed | Are merged `/usr` | Official packages are built on | Packages built on … can break on the other |
+| Codename | classical hosts | merged `/usr` hosts | symlinks allowed | classical hosts | merged `/usr` hosts | classical hosts | merged `/usr` hosts |
+|----------|-----------------|---------------------|-------------------|—----------------|---------------------|---------------------|----------------------|
+| none | yes | no | no | yes | no | yes | yes |
+| weak | yes | yes | yes | yes | no | no | yes |
+| middle | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | no | no |
+| hard | yes | yes | yes | no | yes | no | no |
+| all | no | yes | yes | no | yes | yes | no |
```
The current state of buster is `weak`.