Mono /usr/share/doc symlink problem

[Jo Shields]

Binary package hint: mono

In Jaunty, we moved from merging Mono, to syncing it. One side-effect of this, however, is that upgrades from earlier releases suffer from problems with /usr/share/doc/foo entries sources from the mono source package, as packages which were symlinks here in Ubuntu are not correctly transitioned to independent folders in Debian.

Whilst the Mono team discusses long-term solutions, the simplest short-term fix here is to move back to symlinking for Jaunty, and worry about migration paths in a later release Karmic or later)

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

That won't repair partially broken upgrades, and while you are at it, you could just as well fix it properly. If a symlink changes to be a real directory on upgrade, you need to remove the symlink in the preinst before upgrade. That isn't hard to do, and will be much more robust.

[Jo Shields (directhex)]

Revised debdiff attached, if this is still wrong, then I'm obviously missing something about what you're asking for

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Ugh, nice trick with this .preinst.debhelper hackery to avoid writing debian/<package>.preinst yourself.

Were those symlinks really so widespread to warrant this evil trick, though?

$ find /usr/share/doc -maxdepth 1 -type l -name '*mono*'
/usr/share/doc/mono-jit

If it's just that one, it's much more robust and obvious to just create debian/mono-jit.preinst and rm -f /usr/share/doc/mono-jit in it on upgrade.

[Jo Shields (directhex)]

mono-jit is the only one whose symlink remains - it's the only one which
is technically policy-compliant, as it Depends on mono-common (=
${binary:Version}).

As for widespread, ALL packages made by the mono source package on older
Ubuntu releases used the symlinking trick, meaning about 30 instances on
this system

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

I see, thanks. So this sounds ok for uploading.

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

FWIW, I would prefer to see the symlink removal guarded by a version check, just so we avoid messing with the filesystem in cases where any symlinks there aren't the doing of the packages in question.

And the use of mixed quoting conventions in debian/rules makes me twitch.

But I'm grabbing this for sponsorship to karmic anyway. (I don't think it warrants an SRU to jaunty, FWIW, though if there's going to be a mono SRU for something else we could consider including this change.)

[Jo Shields (directhex)]

I'll discuss implementation of *a* solution at the Debian level with
Mirco, for inclusion in the 2.4 packages which will eventually land in
Karmic.That way we can use a simple "if Ubuntu AND < 2.4" check. I
don't know what he'll agree to though. The difficulty is in finding a
way to save space through symlinking, but without violating Policy.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package mono - 2.0.1-6ubuntu1

---------------
mono (2.0.1-6ubuntu1) karmic; urgency=low

  * debian/rules:
    + Stop symlinking /usr/share/doc entries, to try and bring Ubuntu
      into line with Debian. (LP: #344750)

 -- Jo Shields <email address hidden> Mon, 30 Mar 2009 10:13:16 +0100