Re: merged /usr vs. symlink farms
unblock 848622 by 134758
thanks
On Sun, 2021-08-22 at 11:21:38 +0100, Luca Boccassi wrote:
> On Sat, 2021-08-21 at 22:57 +0200, Guillem Jover wrote:
> > On Sat, 2021-08-21 at 18:47:50 +0100, Luca Boccassi wrote:
> > > The bug is real, nobody doubts that - it has been filed on dpkg 20
> > > years ago.
> >
> > You keep repeating this, but I have no idea what bug you refer to.
> >
> > There's #148258 (from 2002), which is conffile related, and not
> > actionable and should probably just be closed.
> >
> > There's #182747 (from 2003), which while apparently similar is
> > something else completely. This is about the (IMO) misfeature of
> > supporting a local admin to redirect (not alias) a directory using a
> > local symlink (mainly for space management reasons). For an
> > explanation
> > see <https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=779060#10>.
> >
> > There's #406715 (from 2007) which is related to the above misfeature.
>
> I am referring to #134758 since it's linked as the root cause from
> usrmerge's #848622.
Well, that's a bogus block then, because that's obviously not the root
cause. I see I was CCed when that block was set, I guess I missed it.
:/ Fixed it now…
> "dpkg-query: Make -S handle unowned symlinks resolving to owned
> pathnames" filed in February 2002 - 19 years and a half ago. I refer to
> that because it's linked as the root cause in the BTS of the relevant
> issue with usrmerge we are discussing.
Even if the wishlist from that report got implemented, it would still
not fully solve all the problems, where among them «dpkg-query -S»
is probably the lesser one, which would not work in the other direction
anyway (querying a path under /usr/ known to dpkg as being under /).
And then I'm not convinced this should even be implemented at all,
as it would introduce behavior differences between literal pathnames
and patterns, and making them slower (for the first case) or potentially
extremely slower (for the second case), in addition to making the queries
dependent on the on-disk layout (so unreliable from the packaging PoV,
as it would invent on the spot, pathnames not truly coming from any
package nor otherwise known to dpkg).
This for a misfeature in dpkg (supporting redirecting symlinks) that
allowed the current mess anyway. So I'm inclined to wontfix and close
that one.
Not looking forward to further interactions…
Guillem
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