Bug#985343: libvigraimpex-doc: unhandled symlink to directory conversion: /usr/share/doc/libvigraimpex-dev/html -> ../libvigraimpex-doc/html

[Andreas Metzler]

On 2021-03-16 Andreas Beckmann <anbe at debian.org> wrote:
> Package: libvigraimpex-doc
> Version: 1.11.1+dfsg-8
> Severity: serious
> User: debian-qa at lists.debian.org
> Usertags: piuparts

> Hi,

> an upgrade test with piuparts revealed that your package installs files
> over existing symlinks and possibly overwrites files owned by other
> packages. This usually means an old version of the package shipped a
> symlink but that was later replaced by a real (and non-empty)
> directory. This kind of overwriting another package's files cannot be
> detected by dpkg.
[...]


We have

ametzler at argenau:~/GIT/writing/vigra-debian$ head -n5 debian/libvigraimpex-doc.maintscript
# 1.11.1+dfsg-2 shipped the symlink, -3 did not.
symlink_to_dir /usr/share/doc/libvigraimpex-dev/html /usr/share/doc/libvigraimpex-doc/html 1.11.1+dfsg-3~ libvigraimpex-doc

while old libvigraimpex-doc has:

ametzler at argenau:~/GIT/writing/vigra-debian$ dpkg --contents /tmp/libvigraimpex-doc_1.11.1+dfsg-2_all.deb | grep /usr/share/doc/libvigraimpex-dev/html
lrwxrwxrwx root/root         0 2019-03-10 20:07 ./usr/share/doc/libvigraimpex-dev/html -> ../libvigraimpex-doc/html

This used to work. It tested this when doing the switch. Now it looks
like I have to use
# 1.11.1+dfsg-2 shipped the symlink, -3 did not.
symlink_to_dir /usr/share/doc/libvigraimpex-dev/html ../libvigraimpex-doc/html 1.11.1+dfsg-3~ libvigraimpex-doc

But /usr/share/doc/libvigraimpex-doc/html and /usr/share/doc/libvigraimpex-dev/../libvigraimpex-doc/html

Earlier versions of dpkg-maintscript-helper(1) worked with the
debian/libvigraimpex-doc.maintscript we have (verified with dpkg 1.19.7).

cu Andreas