On Tue, Jan 02, 2007 at 03:44:10PM +0200, Tshepang Lekhonkhobe wrote: > Hi, > > I find it wasteful to install the same changelogs (both Debian and > upstream) in binary packages which share the same sources. Why not > have symlinks in place of these and perhaps an extra /usr/share/doc > directory named the same as the source package in case a binary > package of the same name doesn't exist. > > Maybe this is not the right time but then maybe someone should > convince me that I'm proposing a bad idea.
the problem is, you can only do that if you have one of the binary package that is always installed with any of the other, else you will have dangling symlinks, and it's prohibited by the policy (no to mention that it would be quite useless !) Though many packages that do have a foo-common and many foo-* binary packages already symlinks parts of /usr/share/doc/$package/* or even /usr/share/doc/$package itself. If the former has no other limitations than the depends rule, it's not true for the latter, as there is known issues with dpkg handlink migrations from a directory to a symlink (or the reverse I never remember). So when you choose to change your scheme, you need to do that carefully. Finally, TTBOMK debhelper that is the most widely used helper in debian packages do not offers ways to do that in a simple way. I mean you have to craft every symlinks by hand and specifically ask for different dh_installdocs arguments for each of your binary packages. Maybe what could be done is to write a new helper or extend dh_installdocs to have such a behaviour. -- ·O· Pierre Habouzit ··O [EMAIL PROTECTED] OOO http://www.madism.org
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