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Re: persistence of /usr/doc/$pkg (Was: debhelper: /usr/doc problems again)



>That was my first reaction, but it only involves prompting if the
>sysadmin has been messing around where, arguably, he or she really
>shouldn't.  IOW, there *shouldn't* be files there, so we're only
>prompting in a case that *should* never arise.
>
>The sysadmin is really supposed to stick to /usr/local and /etc (and
>maybe /opt).  I have to admit that I've been seriously tempted to just
>silently delete anything in /usr/doc/mypackage that I don't recognize
>just to teach people not to play with system areas, but I s'pose
>that's probably mean.  :-)

I am guessing that all of these issues have been fully discussed,
however, I think that some people might be oversimplifing the issue...

I don't think it is that easy just to remove the old /usr/doc directory
(for the same reason somebody told me you can't just move the files from
/usr/doc to /usr/share/doc).

Suppose that two packages have files under /usr/doc/mypackage,
package A and package B. (for an example, just look for any symbolic
links under /usr/doc on a *slink* system).

When you delete package A, you also delete files that are owned by
package B inside /usr/doc/mypackage. While this doesn't sound very good,
I don't think is a huge problem by itself (please correct me if I am
wrong). However, it does mean that the users documentation would get
deleted, and this documentation isn't locally maintained, either.

Now, when the user deletes that 2nd package, will dpkg get confused and
delete the symlink?

However, seems to me that there always be some messy situations. eg,
install new versions of package A and that uses /usr/share/doc, and then
install old version of package B that uses /usr/doc. Remove package A.
Does A remove the symlink under /usr/doc? Assume it does. Now remove
package B. Oops - dpkg can't find the files for package B, as they were
installed under /usr/share/doc, but that symlink was deleted.
-- 
Brian May <bam@snoopy.apana.org.au>


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