Re: dpkg -S and symlinks
<quote who="Dan Jacobson">
> Fellas, just where does my inexperience reach a crescendo, and just where
> does Debian "owe me something"?:
>
> Noting that the look command lacks the word herbicide, I will be a good
> Samaritan and inform somebody, or so i thought:
> I do
> $ man look
> "If file is not specified, the file /usr/share/dict/words is used..."
> $ dpkg -S /usr/share/dict/words
> dpkg: /usr/share/dict/words not found.
> Oh, I see it is a symlink. Odd, the dpkg man page doesn't mention -S
> doesn't know about symlinks. Must be a bug, no?
>
> OK, apt-cache search mentions various clues, but I do an dpkg -L
> ispell and dont see /usr/share/dict/words there either.
i am guessing here, but it would make sense if the symlinks
were created during one of the various scripts that are executing
during package installation, it would make the linking more flexible,
if this is the case, that means the symlink is not part of the package
list of files, so it would not show up on dpkg -S .
i think it would be a bad idea if dpkg -S followed symlinks and
reported their targets as being part of the package if the link
pointed to such a file. then anyone could create a buncha symlinks
and point them to files and the system would think those symlinks
are part of that package when they are not.
it's not as convient, but i can't really think of a better way
then to manually follow the symlink and check the file it
points to.
and many links are updated on the fly like those in
'update-alternatives'. last thing i would want is dpkg -S telling
me one thing belongs to one package when it infact may belong
to a different package.
nate
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