Re: Making /usr/doc/XXX symbolic link to ../share/doc/XXX is BAD idea
On Wed, Jan 26, 2000 at 11:39:34AM -0800, Seth R Arnold wrote:
> Santiago, there is a reason why we don't support /usr/doc being a symlink to
> someplace else -- because of the insistance on using relative symlinks.
> AFAICT, if we switch to absolute, problems such as this will go away.
>
> Would that be opening new problems?
>
> Of course, the phrase `just switching' implies that it would be quick and
> easy -- which I have no doubt that it would be painful and difficult. Since
> /usr/doc is supposed to go away anyway, perhaps it isn't worth trying to fix
> up something for Marc's unique situation, but -- recognize that it really
> isn't Marc's fault that we require relative symlinks rather than absolute,
> and if we were using absolute, it would not have been a problem in the first
> place.
>
> Why were relative required to begin with? From my perspective, I can't see
> any real good reasons.
I think the main reason for using relative symlinks is so that it
points to the same place when it's NFS mounted, or mounted in its
not-usual place (i.e. if you're working on it via a rescue floppy).
I would prefer absolute symlinks as well, but you can usually work
around it. I've in fact done so for this case:
infocalypse:[~]->ls -ld /usr/doc
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 14 Jan 15 11:05 /usr/doc -> /d/il1/usr.doc
infocalypse:[~]->ls -ld /usr/share/doc
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 20 Jan 15 11:06 /usr/share/doc -> /d/il1/usr.share.doc
infocalypse:[~]->ls -l /d/il1
total 71
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Jan 15 11:03 share -> /usr/share
drwxr-xr-x 389 root root 36932 Jan 25 19:27 usr.doc
drwxr-xr-x 1102 root root 29834 Jan 25 19:24 usr.share.doc
This way ../share in /usr/doc actually points at /usr/share; I ended
up also moving /usr/share/doc once enough docs had been put there,
for the same reason I had moved /usr/doc in the first place.
Really, reiserfs, lvm, and RAID kind of negate the need to do this
kind of rearrangement, but you can always work around it if you need
to do so.
--
Elie Rosenblum That is not dead which can eternal lie,
http://www.cosanostra.net And with strange aeons even death may die.
Admin / Mercenary / System Programmer - _The Necronomicon_
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