Seeking for Help on resolving a symlink problem in icewm

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

Hi,

  I'm adopting icewm since its current maintainer has not more time
  to work on it.

  Up to 1.0.6, the source built 2 packages icewm and icewm-common
  which contained respectively /usr/share/doc/icewm and
  /usr/share/doc/icewm-gnome directories.

  For 1.0.7, the maintainer decided to build 4 packages:
  - icewm-common with a /usr/share/doc/icewm-common directory
    containing copyright, changelog, html docs, ..

  - icewm, icewm-gnome, and icewm-lite (all can be installed
    on the system in the same time). The maintainer decided
    to make /usr/share/doc/icewm* directories links to
    /usr/share/doc/icewm-common as was done in packages like
    xchat and xchat-gnome with xchat-common (13.6 in Debian Policy).

  However, the maintainer did not notice that dpkg does not
  accept to replace a directory by a symlink, from one version of
  a package to another (cf 6.4.2 of the Debian Policy).
  So, once installed, those packages have an empty doc directory
  instead of a symlink.


  Now, I'm trying to find a solution to this problem.

  I tried to remove the symlink from the package, I left the
  '/usr/share/doc' directory in the package and I created
  the symlink in the postinst (and removed it in the prerm).
  Nonetheless, lintian complains:

  E: icewm-gnome: no-copyright-file

  I guess that when lintian finds a /usr/share/doc/<package> link
  within a package, it won't complain since it thinks that the copyright
  file will be found in the directory pointed by the symlink. But in
  my case, the symlink is created in the postinst only.

  So my question is: are there any other solutions to this problem, i.e:

  - could something be done in the preinst rather than in the postinst,
    like removing the old directory allowing to leave the symlink in the
    package? This could be risky in a case of a installation failure.

  - should I forget about symlinks and leave a real directory but with
    only necessary files (copyright, changelogs, READMEs)?

  - other suggestions?


  Thanks for your help.

-- 
Jérôme Marant <jerome.marant@free.fr>