Hi Jonathan, On Thu, 2011-03-03 at 15:58 -0600, Jonathan Nieder wrote: > * how many characters of grace area can tools like dpkg-divert feel > free to use? I don't think tools should be like "whoa, i think this filename is going to be too long" for some arbitrary value, nor should they be like "hey, this filename is under the policy defined limit, so there's nothing to worry about". Instead, they should try to do what they want to do just like they normally would, check for errors like they're already doing, and handle themselves as gracefully as possible and give informative information based on errno when stuff doesn't work as expected. > * when is enough enough and the current pathname scheme actually a > bug that is going to prevent people from being able to install > the package? If the package fails to install, I think we already have processes in place for that. The user would report it and probably give it a serious severity. If they were debootstrapping onto a fat16 filesystem (or something else deigned to be not worth supporting) the release time might step in and say that it's not RC, and otherwise the package will have to be fixed anyway. And anyway can't know what those limits are going to be in all situations. When building the binary package, you have the filename plus the length of the build directory and temporary destdir directory (i.e. /tmp/buildd/<sourcepackage>/debian/<binarypackage>/<path>). Throw some chroots while you're at it and... :) Like I said before, I think having lintian warnings for concrete known/potential issues (like this package won't unpack on a CDROM, ReiserFS, etc) would be good (really good even), but I don't see where the gain is in having arbirary policy-defined limits in packaging. What is the benefit of all this? The only benefit I could think of would be if instead of defining the maximum limit, we defined/referenced a minimum guaranteed limit that "debian installation compatible" filesystems must support. This might then provide a bit of guidance in the situation where install failures occurred on some arbitrary filesystem/package/path combination. Sean
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