Re: Shall we state about #17624 dpkg feature(bug?)

[jerome.marant@free.fr (Jérôme Marant)]

Wichert Akkerman <wichert@wiggy.net> writes:

> Two reasons:
> 
> * The system administrator can have created that symlink manually in
> order to distribute files differently over his filesystems, in which
> case we should not change it into a directory silently.

  What's happening if the symlink is provided by the package itself, i.e
  in the files list?
  Example: /usr/share/doc/xchat-gnome -> /usr/share/doc/xchat-common
  Are you assuming that the administrator could have in mind to change
  the symlink provided by the package?

  Of course, if the symlink was not part of the package, it won't be
  overwriten by a package file whatsoever.

> 
> * when you upgrade a package all the new files are
> put in place on the filesystem, and when they are all installed dpkg
> removes the old versions and renames the new files. You can not do that
> properly if it involves changing a symlink into a directory since the
> symlink might point to a place that also has other files that do not
> belong to the package which would then suddenly disappear.

  But I guess the maintainer can decide not to point to those files
  anymore. This cannot be accidental, IMHO. If I understood correctly,
  the symlink as part of the old package files, will be removed, but
  not the content of the directory it points to.

  My initial question was about replacing a directory by a symlink, both
  provided by the package. Do those kind of consideration apply to that case?

  Thanks.

-- 
Jérôme Marant