Re: `du' control files
>>>>> "SE" == Scott Ellis.
>> With the new lintian check I discovered that some packages install a
>> `du' control file (contains the output of the du command).
>>
>> Does someone know which program is using these files??
>>
>> If there is no good reason for these files, should we consider this a
>> bug? (IMO, yes.)
SE> They are created by the debhelper program dh_du. They're useful for
SE> figuring out how much space on each of your filesystems a package is
SE> taking up, especially useful if one filesystem is getting cramped.
SE> Like the md5sums file, I wouldn't judge their presence either way.
I don't use dh_du, but I do provide du control files in my packages[1],
mostly because I hope some day some tool will make good use of them.
They are useful to check how much disk space is needed under each
directory before installing a package; on tight disk space machines with
more than one partition one would probably want to know what part of
<Installed-Size> would go under /usr, what part under /var and so on.
These informations could obviously be gathered by scanning the tar file in
a deb package, but that would obviously cost more, something significant
at installation time.
[1]: Actually I have:
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------<
cd $(tmp) && du -k * | grep -v 'DEBIAN' | sort -k 2 -o $(DEBIAN)/du
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------<
in my rules files, which I think does something similar to what dh_du does.
Cheers,
Davide G. M. Salvetti - IW5DZC [JN53fr]
Have a look at Debian GNU/Linux: <http://www.debian.org/>.
Debian is the free operating system with open development model.
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