bsdmainutils, wenglish: where is /usr/dict/words?
apenwarr@worldvisions.ca (Avery Pennarun) wrote:
>Hi all,
>
>I'm sure there's a bug here, but I'm not sure who I should submit it to.
>After upgrading to the latest slink, my /usr/dict/words file has
>disappeared.
>
>Upon further investigation, it seems that wenglish has moved the file to
>/usr/share/dict/words. That's not such a bad thing, but the "look" command
>in bsdmainutils doesn't know about it, so it still looks in /usr/dict.
>
>I humbly suggest that we fix look to check _both_ places (for compatibility
>with full _and_ partial upgrades to slink) while simultaneously symlinking
>/usr/share/dict to /usr/dict when it becomes possible.
The first of these two suggestions I have alredy implemented, and the
patch is sitting in bug 27321, an "important" bug against bsdmainutils.
The maintainer hasn't yet uploaded a new version. If he doesn't do so
soon, I'll offer to do a NMR for him.
The second is more difficult. The /usr/dict directory is included
in base-files, so dpkg won't remove it by default until base-files
does, and until all the wordlist packages on the system are upgraded.
Installing the symlink would require coordination between -all- the
wordlist packages, because it would be the -last- one upgraded which would
have to install the symlink. This can only be done if all of the wordlist
packages on the system are upgraded to versions which use /usr/share/dict.
Not all of them even have such versions available.
Personally, I think solving the second one is not worth-while, and it
is sufficient to fix the first one. bsdmainutils is, AFAICT, the only
package which uses /usr/dict/words.
--
Charles Briscoe-Smith
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