[Pkg-sysvinit-devel] Bug#626263: Clarification of §10.5 symlink wording needed

[Roger Leigh]

Hi,

Section 10.5 states:

     In general, symbolic links within a top-level directory should be
     relative, and symbolic links pointing from one top-level directory
     into another should be absolute.  (A top-level directory is a
     sub-directory of the root directory `/'.)

It's not obvious from the wording whether "symbolic links within"
is referring to the symbolic link file itself (source) or destination
contained within the link.  Which is the case?
Some rationale for these requirements would also be useful.

This is related to #626263.
With the creation of /run we are making /var/run a symlink to /run
(and /var/lock a symlink to /run/lock).  The question is whether
these links should be absolute or relative.  i.e. should /var/run
point to /run or ../run?

Relative links have the advantage of pointing to the same place
inside a chroot i.e. .../chroot/var/run/foo points to
.../chroot/run/foo rather than /run/foo (from the POV of the host
system).  But are otherwise more complex and you could hit the max
symlink limit.


Regards,
Roger

-- 
  .''`.  Roger Leigh
 : :' :  Debian GNU/Linux             http://people.debian.org/~rleigh/
 `. `'   Printing on GNU/Linux?       http://gutenprint.sourceforge.net/
   `-    GPG Public Key: 0x25BFB848   Please GPG sign your mail.
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 198 bytes
Desc: Digital signature
URL: <http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-sysvinit-devel/attachments/20110510/c5562ec4/attachment.pgp>