Re: Symlinking /usr/share/doc/<package> is not allowed
On Tue, May 20, 2003 at 08:00:21PM +0200, Andreas Barth wrote:
> The policy vetoe to symlinking intends (in my interpretation) two
> goals. One is to ensure that the licences don't "change" unintendidly.
> This could e.g. happen if there is a global file called GPL, the
> packages link there copyright statement to it, and the GPL-file is
> incremented from GPL version 2 and later to GPL version 3 by just one
> misbehaving program. The other is to make sure the copyright file is
> always available. Both traps are avoided in the case where the
> documentation directory is symlinked to the base packages directory.
What if the user has version 1 of abc installed, and version 2
of abc-doc installed, AND /usr/share/doc/abc-doc is a symlink to
/usr/share/doc/abc, AND the copyright changed between version 1 and
version 2?
The user may lookup /usr/share/doc/abc-doc/copyright and get the wrong
version.
For a good example of why a copyright file might be completely changed
between two versions, consider ssh when it changed over to be built from
the "OpenSSH" sources. (It doesn't have a -doc package though).
Also I think it is worth pointing out in this circumstance that I
may want to install abc-doc even though abc is not installed or is a
different version (eg. to see what the package is like before installing
it).
--
Brian May <bam@debian.org>
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