Bug#843932: dev-pkg-without-shlib-symlink: Please consider *.so links in /lib
Package: lintian
Version: 2.5.49
Hello,
libsystemd-dev currently ships
/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libsystemd.so -> libsystemd.so.0.17.0
as the development/compiler symlink. This causes a a lintian warning
[1] about dev-pkg-without-shlib-symlink, apparently because lintian
only checks for the *.so symlink in /usr. It justifies that with the
policy 8.4 [2], but contrary to what the lintian help says there is
not actually a requirement for the *.so symlink to be in /usr, just
that it must exists. The example just happens to have both the library
and the .so symlink in /usr as that's certainly the common case.
I don't see any technical reason why a *.so symlink in /lib would be
bad. It most certainly works (gcc/ld look there), the cost is
negligible (just one inode more on the root partition), and with
merged /usr it doesn't matter at all.
The main reason why it matters is that apparently automake has no
declarative method (that we know of) to put the library into /lib but
the *.so into /usr/lib. This leads to hacks and hard to
maintain/understand code like [3]. If there is a declarative/easy
solution I'd be interested in hearing it. But independently of that,
I would like to ask you to reconsider this lintian check.
Thanks,
Martin
[1] https://lintian.debian.org/maintainer/pkg-systemd-maintainers@lists.alioth.debian.org.html#systemd
[2] https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-sharedlibs.html#s-sharedlibs-dev
[3] https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/4585/files
--
Martin Pitt | http://www.piware.de
Ubuntu Developer (www.ubuntu.com) | Debian Developer (www.debian.org)
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