Bug#404185: explanation for the bug...

[Lior Kaplan]

It took my a few hours to figure this out (after check all the release
between sarge till today). I finally decided to do the upgrades manually
by copying the files to my /tmp and doing the commands of postinst and
prerm.

First, I wasn't able to reproduce the bug, and that because it happens
during upgrades. The symptoms appear on removal.

Technical side (upgrading from version A to version B):
version A puts the files, create the symlink in the postinst.
while upgrading:
- version A prerm runs (which has nothing of the symlink yet)
- version B preinst runs (doesn't exists for your package)
- files are copied.
- version A postrm (doesn't exists for your package)
- version B postinst regenerates the symlink.

Example with the files:
kaplan at desktop:/tmp/sendbox2$ ls -l ./usr/share/doc/libglade2-dev/html
lrwxrwxrwx 1 kaplan kaplan 46 2006-12-22 21:57
./usr/share/doc/libglade2-dev/html ->
/tmp/sendbox2/usr/share/gtk-doc/html/libglade/
kaplan at desktop:/tmp/sendbox2$ ls -l ./usr/share/doc/libglade2-dev/html/
total 172
-rw-r--r-- 1 kaplan kaplan 36002 2006-12-15 16:04 GladeXML.html
-rw-r--r-- 1 kaplan kaplan   654 2006-12-15 16:04 home.png
-rw-r--r-- 1 kaplan kaplan  5057 2006-12-15 16:04 index.html
-rw-r--r-- 1 kaplan kaplan  5600 2006-12-15 16:04 index.sgml
-rw-r--r-- 1 kaplan kaplan   459 2006-12-15 16:04 left.png
-rw-r--r-- 1 kaplan kaplan  6783 2006-12-15 16:04 libglade.devhelp
-rw-r--r-- 1 kaplan kaplan  7552 2006-12-15 16:04 libglade.devhelp2
[ skipping the rest of the files ]


kaplan at desktop:/tmp/sendbox2$ ls -l ./usr/share/doc/libglade2-dev/html
kaplan at desktop:/tmp/sendbox2$ ln -sf
`pwd`/usr/share/gtk-doc/html/libglade/
`pwd`/usr/share/doc/libglade2-dev/html
kaplan at desktop:/tmp/sendbox2$ ls -l ./usr/share/doc/libglade2-dev/html
lrwxrwxrwx 1 kaplan kaplan 46 2006-12-22 21:57
./usr/share/doc/libglade2-dev/html ->
/tmp/sendbox2/usr/share/gtk-doc/html/libglade/
kaplan at desktop:/tmp/sendbox2$ ls -l ./usr/share/doc/libglade2-dev/html/
total 172
-rw-r--r-- 1 kaplan kaplan 36002 2006-12-15 16:04 GladeXML.html
-rw-r--r-- 1 kaplan kaplan   654 2006-12-15 16:04 home.png
-rw-r--r-- 1 kaplan kaplan  5057 2006-12-15 16:04 index.html
-rw-r--r-- 1 kaplan kaplan  5600 2006-12-15 16:04 index.sgml
-rw-r--r-- 1 kaplan kaplan   459 2006-12-15 16:04 left.png
lrwxrwxrwx 1 kaplan kaplan    46 2006-12-22 21:59 libglade ->
/tmp/sendbox2/usr/share/gtk-doc/html/libglade/
-rw-r--r-- 1 kaplan kaplan  6783 2006-12-15 16:04 libglade.devhelp
-rw-r--r-- 1 kaplan kaplan  7552 2006-12-15 16:04 libglade.devhelp2
[ skipping the rest of the files ]

Notice the "nice" symlink that was added to the file list. Since
/usr/share/doc/libglade2-dev/html already exists as a symlink, ln create
the new symlink inside it, and uses the source name for the target name
(hence libglade -> /tmp/sendbox2/usr/share/gtk-doc/html/libglade/).
Ignore the /tmp/sendbox part... it's for the testing (:

In version 2.6.0-2 you added the removal of
/usr/share/doc/libglade2-dev/html to the prerm. But this script is
executed only when we'll upgrade from version 2.6.0-2 onwards.

So this bug won't appear while upgrading in the future, but it _will_
affect when upgrading from sarge to etch and removing the package.

As this is a "Severity: minor" bug I don't see much to do as to marking
it as fixed.

Thanks.

-- 

Lior Kaplan
kaplan at debian.org

GPG fingerprint:
C644 D0B3 92F4 8FE4 4662  B541 1558 9445 99E8 1DA0