Re: Bug#742836: syslinux: The Debian package of syslinux 6 breaks compatibility by gratuitously moving files around
Control: reopen -1
On Fri, 28 Mar 2014, Daniel Baumann wrote:
> On 03/27/2014 10:49 PM, Raphaël Hertzog wrote:
> > The experimental packages of syslinux move files around and thus breaks
> > all syslinux users that rely on the default (upstream defined) location of
> > the syslinux provided files.
>
> no. packages like live-build will use syslinux-dev which has everything
> in its normal place.
This still breaks various packages in Debian which depend on syslinux and
expect the files at the normal place. Thus backwards compat is broken.
Can you explain what is the purpose of the change?
Not knowing the purpose, I can hardly suggest an improvement. But maybe
you should use a new package name for the new purpose of the package:
something like syslinux-mbr and keep "syslinux" as the implicit
syslinux-dev that you created.
The changelog has almost no rationale for the changes:
* Moving syslinux mbr file location to /usr/lib/syslinux/mbr.
* Moving syslinux-common modules file location to /usr/lib/syslinux-
common/modules.
* Moving syslinux-common modules file location to /usr/lib/syslinux-
common/modules.
* Splitting out isolinux into own package for syslinux-installer and
debian-live usage.
* Splitting out pxelinux into own package for syslinux-installer and
debian-live usage.
* Splitting out utils into own package to relieve burden on syslinux and
syslinux-common.
[...]
* Splitting pseudo architecture-independent files for use by debian-cd
and other development related files out into syslinux-dev package to
relieve burden on syslinux-common (usually installed by anyone using
any of the syslinux, extlinux, isolinux, or pxelinux package) and to
allow debian-live to use architecture-dependent files on non-uploader
architectures.
As I said, it's fine to split files in multiple packages, you can have the new
syslinux package depend on "syslinux-mbr, syslinux-efi, isolinux, pxelinux"
and thus you don't break anything and syslinux-installer (which is not in
Debian apparently) and live-build can benefit from installing only the new
package that they need.
But please don't break other packages when you can easily avoid it.
Cheers,
--
Raphaël Hertzog ◈ Debian Developer
Discover the Debian Administrator's Handbook:
→ http://debian-handbook.info/get/
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