severity 428507 normal
thanks
On Tue, 12 Jun 2007, Dmitry E. Oboukhov wrote:
Package: dpkg
Version: 1.13.25
Severity: grave
Please don't inflate the severity without good reasons.
If the old version of the package contains symlink, and the new version
tries to save a directory into the same place, then an upgrade won't be
correct.
This has always been the case and it's not a bug but a feature. It's that
way so that the local admin can effectively move a sub-directory somewhere
else (where he has more spaces for example) and replace the directory with
a symlink.
If the package really wants to replace a symlink, it has to remove the
symlink in the preinst script. This behaviour is documented in the
Debian Policy:
http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-maintainerscripts.html
| A directory will never be replaced by a symbolic link to a directory or
| vice versa; instead, the existing state (symlink or not) will be left
| alone and dpkg will follow the symlink if there is one.
I'll let the dpkg maintainer close this bug (or merge it if he prefers, of
tag wontfix).
The bug that the symlink doesn't not replace the directory is already
documented in #182747. #406715 is another variant where the symlink is
silently ignored when a pre-existing directory is there (although in that
case it concerns two different packages).
Cheers,
--
Raphaël Hertzog
Premier livre français sur Debian GNU/Linux :
http://www.ouaza.com/livre/admin-debian/
