Re: Moving to the FHS: not right now!

[Richard Braakman <dark@xs4all.nl>]

I'm replying to two at once here, in the interest of efficiency.

Chris Waters wrote:
> Yes, that's why I suggest that we wait till after Potato, and start
> the changeover at the *beginning* of a release cycle.  That way we
> have as much time as possible.

That was the plan the previous two releases as well :-)

Chris Waters wrote:
> Richard Braakman <dark@xs4all.nl> writes:
> 
> > That last sentence is an error.  When all packages have moved to
> > /usr/share/doc, we can drop the symlink handling code from the
> > postinst and prerm, with no loss.
> 
> Er, no, not if the symlink handling is *in* the postinst/prerm.  If
> it's there, then we have to wait another release or two, in order to
> support people doing partial upgrades.

How so?  It seems to me that we have to wait exactly one full release.
When we've released a version that has all packages converted, the
next release can drop all the symlinking code.

> > That is because at every upgrade, the symlink is removed by the old
> > package and (possibly) reinstalled by the new package.
> 
> Ah, I see.  If the symlink handling is all done by dpkg, and NOT by
> postinst/prerm, then you may indeed be correct.

No, it's done by postinst/prerm.  dpkg can't do it if the symlink
is in the data.tar.gz, because it will not replace a directory with
a symlink.

> > The only remaining technical objection I have to it is that it will
> > fail for packages that have extra files in their /usr/doc directory,
> > either due to package cruft or because the system admin put something
> > there.  Those packages can not make the symlink because there's still
> > a real directory, and it will appear to the user that the
> > documentation is simply missing.
> 
> Won't the files just disappear?  The way the contents of /dev
> disappeared recently?  :-)

I'm not sure, I'm not about to experiment :)

[philosophical discussion deleted]

> But, if some of us think that we're *too* focused on releases, and
> some of us (like me) think that we're not focused *enough* on
> releases, then maybe we're actually striking exactly the right
> balance.  I dunno.  :-)

I don't know about a balance, but certainly we should have people
watching both sides of the scale :)

Richard Braakman