Re: Bug#42477: [PROPOSED} delay the /usr/doc transition till after potato
On Wed, 4 Aug 1999, Chris Waters wrote:
> Therefore, I propose that Packages intended for for the distributions
> code-named "Potato" (and "Slink") continue to use /usr/doc. This will
> ensure that Potato is consistent. Plus, this gives us an entire
> release cycle to find a smooth transition path. And to finish dealing
> with *other* FHS issues, so we really *do* have an FHS-compliant
> system.
Yes, this seems to be the best thing to do for potato.
Now, for the transition, there are basically two scenarios:
1) Every package just moves the files from /usr/doc to /usr/share/doc.
2) There is some method to assure that new packages will work on old
systems, with all their dependencies satisfied.
ad 1): This is, of course, the simplest way to do things. The only thing
that is required for this, is that there is at least one upload of
every package between two consecutive releases. One big drawback is
that people installing 'potato+1' packages on potato (or slink,
or ...) systems will not find the documentation easily.
ad 2): This is the way Debian seems to be heading right now. People want
to have compatibility between different releases, and that's good.
But how many releases are really supported? There are many packages
with no dependencies at all. Those are mostly documentation
packages, like packaging-manual and gimp-manual. If I want to take
one of those packages from Debian 2.6 (or whatever) an install it
on a Debian 2.0 (or 1.1, or whatever) system, will it still behave
the right way? My point here is, a really smooth transition will
likely be a burden on _all_ packages, for ever.
One of the simplest ways to achieve 2) is made impossible because dpkg
screws up. I have a package that Debian decided to drop because of license
issues. I thought, I'd make a new version of it using /usr/share/doc
instead of /usr/doc and install it. I decided to add in a symlink
'/usr/doc/<package> -> ../share/doc/<package>', too, for compatibility.
When I installed this package, dpkg didn't install the symlink, though, it
just left the directory /usr/doc/<package> in place, which was now empty.
BTW, I think the first issue that should be sorted out is how much
compatibility there should be between a release and all its predecessors.
The outcome of this debate will greatly effect the issue of which method
to achieve this compatibility is best.
Remco
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