Comment 2 for bug 213566

There is an interesting bit in xkeyboard-config/debian/preinst fiddling with the symlinks:

            for link in xfree86 xfree86.lst xfree86.xml xorg xorg.lst xorg.xml; do
                rm -f "/etc/X11/xkb/rules/$link"
            done

Perhaps the above is getting run on upgrade, but the corresponding code to generate the links is being skipped? There is a comment there "TODO: we should really have rollback code for all of this".

Or... also in debian/rules is this line for the configure step:

        ./configure $(confflags) \
          --prefix=/usr \
          --disable-xkbcomp-symlink --with-xkb-rules-symlink=xfree86,xorg \
          --with-xkb-base=$(xkb_base) \
          XKBCOMP=/no/thanks

Which makes me wonder if that --with-xkb-rules-symlink is not coming into effect during the upgrade.