Re: Shall we state about #17624 dpkg feature(bug?)
On Mon, Jul 23, 2001 at 05:34:35PM +0200, Wichert Akkerman wrote:
> Previously Jérôme Marant wrote:
> > Sorry, but I did not see any clear documentation about why dpkg
> > should behave that way. Please understand that I don't care if
> > you want to close that bug, but would you mind explaining me
> > or/and give me examples of what a different behaviour would lead
> > to. I would appreciate. Thanks.
>
> 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.
Isn't the system administrator is discouraged from manipulating filesystem
objects that should be under the control of the packaging system? If she wants
to distribute files over different filesystems, there are better ways (like
mount, especially in 2.4.x).
> * 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.
I don't quite understand what you're saying. What would cause those other
files to disappear? The symlink could be unpacked as foo.dpkg-new, then the
old directory removed and/or renamed and the symlink switched into place.
I agree that it's more complicated to do this safely than to work with regular
files/directories.
--
- mdz
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