purging a package for different architecture may delete files needed for the actual architecture

[Párkányi, Balázs]

After installing adobe-flashplugin on my 64-bit system (11.10) I removed all the packages for i386 architecture. Then I purged them. After restarting the machine, the default Ubuntu session stopped working. I found that when I purged package libglib2.0-0:i386, dpkg deleted the file /usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/gschemas.compiled. However it also belongs to libglib2.0-0. I supposed that the library missed this file, because after copying it back, my box started to work again.
I do not know, if it is a serious problem, but dpkg should handle these cases, when there are packages installed for different architectures. May hard linking the same files prevent unwanted deletion?

[Raphaël Hertzog (hertzog)]

This is a bug of libglib2.0-0 because its postrm purge removes it unconditionnaly even if the package is still installed on another architecture.

Cf the extract below of /var/lib/dpkg/info/libglib2.0-0:i386.postrm
if [ "$1" = purge ] && [ -d /usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas ]; then
    # Purge the compiled schemas
    rm -f /usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/gschemas.compiled
    rmdir -p --ignore-fail-on-non-empty /usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas
fi

[Párkányi, Balázs (balazs-fang-deactivatedaccount)]

> This is a bug of libglib2.0-0 because its postrm purge removes it
> unconditionnaly even if the package is still installed on another
> architecture.
>
> Cf the extract below of /var/lib/dpkg/info/libglib2.0-0:i386.postrm
> if [ "$1" = purge ] && [ -d /usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas ]; then
> # Purge the compiled schemas
> rm -f /usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/gschemas.compiled
> rmdir -p --ignore-fail-on-non-empty /usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas
> fi

Yes, I saw the same, but I did not look after the problem deeply, so I
thought dpkg is unaware of this kind of problem.

Sorry for rhe bug report addressed to the unappropriate package and
thanks for correcting me so fast!

balazs