[From nobody Mon Jun  8 19:07:05 2026
Received: (at submit) by bugs.debian.org; 6 Jun 2026 11:12:48 +0000
X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 4.0.1-bugs.debian.org_2005_01_02
 (2024-03-25) on buxtehude.debian.org
X-Spam-Level: 
X-Spam-Status: No, score=-20.0 required=4.0 tests=BAYES_00,
 BODY_INCLUDES_PACKAGE,FROMDEVELOPER,HAS_PACKAGE,NO_RELAYS,
 WORD_WITHOUT_VOWELS,XMAILER_REPORTBUG autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no
 version=4.0.1-bugs.debian.org_2005_01_02
X-Spam-Bayes: score:0.0000 Tokens: new, 10; hammy, 114; neutral, 43; spammy,
 1. spammytokens:0.941-+--H*r:bugs.debian.org
 hammytokens:0.000-+--XDebbugsCc, 0.000-+--X-Debbugs-Cc,
 0.000-+--H*Ad:N*Bug, 0.000-+--H*Ad:N*Tracking, 0.000-+--HTo:N*Debian
Return-path: <rene@debian.org>
Received: via submission by buxtehude.debian.org with esmtp (Exim 4.96)
 (envelope-from <rene@debian.org>) id 1wVoxL-003LhN-2l
 for submit@bugs.debian.org; Sat, 06 Jun 2026 11:12:48 +0000
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
From: Rene Engelhard <rene@debian.org>
To: Debian Bug Tracking System <submit@bugs.debian.org>
Subject: destroys symlinks
Message-ID: <178074436175.1290614.17479362454445178320.reportbug@frodo>
X-Mailer: reportbug 13.2.0
Date: Sat, 06 Jun 2026 13:12:41 +0200
Delivered-To: submit@bugs.debian.org

Package: strip-nondeterminism
Version: 1.14.1-2
Severity: important
X-Debbugs-Cc: rene@debian.org

Hi,

While working on https://people.debian.org/~rene/manual-strip-nondeterminism.diff
(without the -f...) I noticed this:

$ ls empty.zip 
empty.zip
$ ls -l empty.zip 
-rw-r--r-- 1 rene rene 22 10. Aug 2023  empty.zip
$ ln -sf empty.zip test.zip
$ ls -l *.zip
-rw-r--r-- 1 rene rene 22 10. Aug 2023  empty.zip
lrwxrwxrwx 1 rene rene  9  6. Jun 13:05 test.zip -> empty.zip
$ for i in `find . -name "*.zip"`; do strip-nondeterminism -t zip $i; done
Normalized ./empty.zip
Normalized ./test.zip

(so simulate how it'd be ran automatically for all .zips anywhere)

$ ls -l *.zip
-rw-r--r-- 1 rene rene 22  6. Jun 13:07 empty.zip
-rw-r--r-- 1 rene rene 22  6. Jun 13:07 test.zip

Now the symlink is gone and we have two identical files.

This is bad.

There are symlinks for a reason :) (e.g. /usr/lib/something to
/usr/share/something for policy for arch-indep files.)

Still happens on sid where i noticed.

I think it should either ignore symlinks or follow them (in the above
case either would have worked, if following the second call then would have
nothing to normalize)

Regards,

Rene
]