Bug#2828: Horrible aliasing problem (was xosview)

[Raul Miller <rdm@tad.micro.umn.edu>]

Raul Miller:
 > > (2) stat directories so that you can recognize aliased
 > > directories.  [Be careful to use the equivalent of $path/.]

Ian Jackson:
...
 > However, in order to spot aliases across packages (eg, one package
 > installs /usr/bin/X11/xfoo and another /usr/X11R6/bin/xfoo) I would
 > need to stat every directory listed in the dpkg databases every
 > time dpkg started up, and keep the stat information saved somewhere
 > in memory while it ran.  This would be very slow - especially at
 > startup, which is slow enough already.

Hmm..

Maybe you could maintain a table of symbolic links to directories.
This table would be reasonably small and could be updated any time
dpkg notices a change.

You might want to document some kind of mechanism to upgrade the
registry if the sys admin re-arranges things between dpkg runs.  [For
the most part this shouldn't be necessary, as you'll only miss
directories which are targets of symlinks dpkg hasn't seen but which
have files installed by dpkg.]

--
Raul