Bug#168904: non-files in dpkg -L output [Was: Bug#39830: [AMENDMENT]: get rid of undocumented(7) symlinks]

[Andrew Suffield <asuffield@debian.org>]

Package: dpkg
Severity: wishlist

On Tue, Nov 12, 2002 at 05:33:06PM +0000, Colin Watson wrote:
> The reason why I'm supporting this proposal is because I find the
> symlinks to undocumented(7) technically less than ideal in a number of
> ways. They lead to a farm of dangling symlinks on machines that don't
> have the manpages package installed (#32019, #53214); they have
> translation issues that would necessitate some very ugly hacks like not
> honouring symlinks in the expected way (#167291); and they cause this
> very common complaint due to the symlinks showing up in 'dpkg -L'
> output:
> 
>   17:06 <weasel> you are happy that you finally found some docs, wait
>   for groff to render it, and what you get is a stupid undocumented(7)
>   page

It would be most helpful if dpkg --listfiles had a way to indicate the
type of relevant files, or better yet, if it just looked vaguely like
ls output (complete with mode and owner). Preferably including support
for --color. This should probably be a new option (dpkg --ls?).

[This is relatively easy if it displays the currently-installed state
of the files, and currently infeasible if it displays the
what-I-installed state]

-- 
  .''`.  ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield
 : :' :  http://www.debian.org/ | Dept. of Computing,
 `. `'                          | Imperial College,
   `-             -><-          | London, UK