Re: Vanishing /usr/doc symlink

[Santiago Vila <sanvila@unex.es>]

On Fri, 18 Jan 2002, Steve Langasek wrote:

> On Fri, Jan 18, 2002 at 04:30:50PM +0100, Santiago Vila wrote:
> > Regarding the second, I suppose you refer to the `must' in "each package
> > must maintain a symlink `/usr/doc/<package>'" as stated in one of your
> > previous messages.
>
> > Does this really mean /usr/doc has to belong (in the "dpkg -S" sense)
> > to some package? Would not be enough that /usr/doc is in the system
> > (for example, created by debootstrap) to comply with policy?
>
> What is the upgrade path if the directory is created by debootstrap?
> There does have to be something which gets rid of the directory and
> replaces it with a symlink, which I seem to recall is the next stage of
> the migration.  debootstrap is never run for upgraded systems, correct?

Correct. The upgrade path would be that in an upgrade from potato,
dpkg will not remove /usr/doc (even if /usr/doc does not belong to any
package) because it's not empty but fully populated by symlinks. For
new systems, /usr/doc would be there from the beginning, created by
debootstrap.

But there is a point of possible failure: If /usr/doc is a "legitimate"
symlink (something like /.1/newdisk/doc as in Manoj's example) then it
would be removed when upgrading to woody (exactly as it happened to
Julian in the message that started this thread).

So it's better that base-files restores /usr/doc in woody ASAP, if
it's still possible to do so.

Question for AJ: Would a new upload of base-files for unstable and
woody-proposed-updates would reach testing in a reasonable amount of
time or should we look for other alternatives?

Thanks.