Hi, Yves-Alexis Perez wrote:
> as said on irc, it'd be nice if dpkg could handle package upgrade > involving symlinks and directories a bit more nicely. See also [1], [2], and [3]. The intent of the current behavior is that the sysadmin is free to use symlinks to cause files in one directory to appear on a different partition, and dpkg will leave that alone rather than replacing it with a directory. For symmetry, dpkg will not automatically replace a directory with a symlink, either. Better semantics, implemented in maintainer scripts for many packages, are: - after a directory changes to a symlink in the shipped package, change the directory on disk to a symlink, if it is a directory and is empty. If it is not empty, make a backup and then put a symlink there. - before a symlink changes to a directory in the shipped package, check if there is a symlink to the shipped target there on disk. If so, remove the symlink and replace it with a directory. (If not, leave the symlink alone.) After a package has been unpacked, dpkg doesn't actually know which files were originally directories or symlinks, so it can't currently implement these semantics internally. Maybe some mitigating features would be possible, though? - teaching best practices about directory <--> symlink transitions to dpkg-maintscript-helper - adding a file to declare which directories changed to symlinks (and to where) or vice versa, and in which versions [1] http://bugs.debian.org/316935 [2] http://bugs.debian.org/406715 [3] http://bugs.debian.org/182747 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
