Bug#362885: x11-common: unable to upgrade, rmdir: /usr/X11R6/bin: Directory not empty
On 2006-05-15 15:43:31 -0500, Steve Langasek wrote:
> On Mon, May 15, 2006 at 05:01:56AM +0200, Vincent Lefevre wrote:
> > A solution that breaks the system is not a good solution. The breakage
> > for official Debian packages is avoided thanks to the many conflicts
> > in the "Conflicts:" field, but this doesn't work with packages that
> > come from a 3rd party source[*]: as there's no such conflict, one can
> > install/uninstall them without any error, with the effect that dpkg
> > removes the symbolic link /usr/X11R6/bin (and prevents any later
> > upgrade of x11-common).
>
> No, this is an incorrect description of dpkg's behavior. The
> /usr/X11R6/bin symlink is left in place,
It is not left in place when the package is removed (or upgraded?).
See the example I gave in my other message (with opera).
> and the package you're installing that isn't conflicted with ends up
> with its binaries installed to /usr/bin by following the symlink.
>
> This is bad, but AFAICT it's least-bad.
The consequence is that the package will not necessarily work: with
Opera, /usr/X11R6/bin/opera is a symlink to /usr/bin/opera. So, this
is really bad, as the binary in /usr/bin may be installed first, then
the symlink in /usr/X11R6/bin may overwrite the binary.
> > And even with only official Debian packages, this solution is fragile,
> > because if some new package adds /usr/X11R6/bin by mistake, this will
> > also break the system.
>
> Not in the case that x11-common is unpacked before this other, new
> package.
If for some reason the other package needs to be removed and
reinstalled, this will break.
--
Vincent Lefèvre <vincent@vinc17.org> - Web: <http://www.vinc17.org/>
100% accessible validated (X)HTML - Blog: <http://www.vinc17.org/blog/>
Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / SPACES project at LORIA
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