Bug#1026388: [Pkg-utopia-maintainers] Bug#1026388: network-manager: Please use upstream default paths for NM libexec binaries in /usr/libexec

[Michael Biebl]

Hi Neal

Am 19.12.22 um 13:04 schrieb Neal Gompa:

Package: network-manager
Version: 1.40.6-1
Severity: wishlist

Dear Maintainer,

With the upcoming freeze of Debian Bookworm, I would like to request
that Debian's NetworkManager builds install their libexec binaries
in the upstream preferred location in /usr/libexec.

This aligns with what other distributions do today (notably Fedora
and openSUSE) and is permitted in Debian since policy standard 4.1.5.0
(released in 2018) because that is when FHS 3.0 (released in 2015) was
adopted by Debian.

I would prefer to see this fixed with Debian Bookworm to minimize the
continuing pain this deviation causes, especially for upstream projects
that rely on these binaries to activate parts of NetworkManager functionality.

Packages installing VPN service files:

As the freeze is already pretty close and this potentially affects all the following packages, I'd like to postpone this transition to bookworm+1 to avoid unnecessary churn this close to the freeze and ending up with a half-done transition:

$ apt-file search /usr/lib/NetworkManager/VPN/
network-manager-fortisslvpn: 
/usr/lib/NetworkManager/VPN/nm-fortisslvpn-service.name
network-manager-iodine: /usr/lib/NetworkManager/VPN/nm-iodine-service.name
network-manager-l2tp: /usr/lib/NetworkManager/VPN/nm-l2tp-service.name
network-manager-openconnect: 
/usr/lib/NetworkManager/VPN/nm-openconnect-service.name
network-manager-openvpn: /usr/lib/NetworkManager/VPN/nm-openvpn-service.name
network-manager-pptp: /usr/lib/NetworkManager/VPN/nm-pptp-service.name
network-manager-ssh: /usr/lib/NetworkManager/VPN/nm-ssh-service.name
network-manager-sstp: /usr/lib/NetworkManager/VPN/nm-sstp-service.name
network-manager-strongswan: 
/usr/lib/NetworkManager/VPN/nm-strongswan-service.name
network-manager-vpnc: /usr/lib/NetworkManager/VPN/nm-vpnc-service.name

Hope that makes sense.

Regards,
Michael

[1] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1026385

At least network-manager-iodine would currently be broken by this change, as it doesn't hard-code the full-path to the auth-dialog, see [1]. Then there is of course NetworkManager itself, network-manager-gnome (nm-connection-editor/nm-applet) which currently use --libexecdir=/usr/lib/NetworkManager. I think, once network-manager-iodine is fixed, NM can start using /usr/libexec and packages can migrate to the new path at their own pace. Once bookworm+1 is open for development, I would file corresponding wishlist bugs against the packages above.

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