Re: Request for "beta testers" for latex-cjk

[Justin Pryzby <justinpryzby@users.sourceforge.net>]

On Wed, Oct 12, 2005 at 12:22:48AM -0500, Ming Hua wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 11, 2005 at 07:00:03PM -0400, Justin Pryzby wrote:
> > On Tue, Oct 11, 2005 at 11:12:30PM +0200, Danai SAE-HAN wrote:
> > > 1. I have several subpackages, so each has its own directory in
> > >    /usr/share/doc/.  I wish to centralize all docs, example files the
> > >    changelog and the copyright file all in one single directory, id
> > >    est /usr/share/doc/latex-cjk/.  (Those package from the latex-cjk
> > >    source of course, not the extra Japanese and Korean font packages,
> > >    since they use a different source each.)
> > > 
> > >    Do I just have to install them manually (put them in a .install
> > >    instead of in a .docs file)?  And what about the changelog and
> > >    copyright files?  They use the same source anyway.
> > Every package must have at least /u/s/d/$p/copyright; it is valid if
> > /u/s/d/$p is a symlink to some other package.  From policy 12.3:
> > 
> > | `/usr/share/doc/<package>' may be a symbolic link to another directory
> > | in `/usr/share/doc' only if the two packages both come from the same
> > | source and the first package Depends on the second.[2]
> > 
> > Although I don't know why you would do this, if you decide to use
> > maintscripts to create that symlink, be sure to handle the case that
> > /u/s/d/$p doesn't exist (because the local admin is allowed to rm -fr
> > /u/s/d/).
> 
> I used to use dh_link to make a symlink from /u/s/d/$p1 to /u/s/d/$p2 at
> build time.  I must have learned it from some other packages, though I
> don't remember which.  Not sure if it can handle the case of missing
> /u/s/d/$p1 though, the result should be a dangling symlink, I suppose.
It will handle it, and the result will be a dangling symlink (but only
if the local admin causes it to dangle, which is the only acceptible
case).  Indeed, the only complication is if you handle the linking not
at build time, but at installtime.  And I think the only conceivable
reason for doing this would be that dpkg will follow a symlink in one
package if another package creates a file in a subdirectory (of that
symlink).  Something like this is true .. I don't remember the exact
details.

I think it is generally true that everything that doesn't necessarily
have to be created by maintscripts should not be, and should instead
be provided as in the .deb as a normal file (because then it has
md5sums, and then the maintscripts are shorter and sweeter).

-- 
Clear skies,
Justin