Bug#922674: debian-policy: make symlink requirements consistent
Ansgar Burchardt <ansgar@debian.org> writes:
> It seems strange to treat top-level directories differently: why
> should /usr be allowed to be a symlink, but /usr/local, /usr/lib or
> /usr/share/doc not? I can't come up with a better idea than that
> top-level directories are something like "driver letters".
I think the rationale was just that it was more common to move top-level
directories to another drive with more space than it was to muck about
below the top level. I'm not sure we document that difference anywhere
useful for the user, though.
> So I suggest to either:
> (a) require *all* symlinks to be relative
> (b) forbid using '..' in symlinks
Personally, I prefer (b) -- I think relative symlinks that ascend out of a
directory are a questionable pattern in general. But this is a very large
change that would affect a lot of packages (admittedly, in a way that
could mostly be cleaned up by debhelper), and is also a pretty significant
break with past practice that will probably break some system out there in
some way.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
Reply to: