Contents
Summary
Since Mageia 3 we no longer support dedicated /bin, /sbin and /lib[64] folders. We should tidy up packaging to reflect this.
Owner
- Name: Colin Guthrie
- Email: colin@mageia.org
Resources
Every packager
Current status
- Targeted release: Mageia 4
- Last updated: 2013-01-21
- Percentage of completion: 0%
Detailed Description
Despite them being only symlinks in any installed system, many packages still ship files in /bin, /sbin and /lib[64]. We should tidy up packaging to ensure that no package actually includes files directly in these folders.
Some rpm macros also refer to packages in /sbin, like /sbin/install-info, and should be updated.
As well as the binary paths we should ensure that we apply packaging rules to ban e.g. package files in /etc. For example XDG desktop files in /etc (see tracker package) marked as configs. These should be shipped in /usr and if the user wishes to override them system-wide, they can copy them into /etc.
Why it would be good for Mageia to include it
In order to cope with the symlink case, we have to have some quirks in rpm and various other places to ensure that the filesystem package is installed in the first transaction (even when using a chroot). This isn't 100% reliable and has caused some issues during the Mageia 3 cycle. In order to avoid the need for this, we should ensure that only the filesystem package actually ships files (or in this case just symlinks) with a path of /bin, /sbin and /lib[64].
Test case
urpmf "^/(bin|sbin|lib|lib64)/" | sort -u
Software / Packages Dependencies
Patches to rpmlint to reject such files and updated policy on the build infrastructure to reject any package that contains said files.
What could disrupt development of this new feature
Not much. It could theoretically affect some people upgrading from Mageia 2 directly to Mageia 4 but even this is unlikely.
Planning
Not much needed other than the above urpmf command to see what packages would be affected. At the time of writing (Mageia 3 beta 2) it affects 49578 files in 295 installed packages (not source packages).
Contingency
None needed.
