[Pkg-xen-devel] Bug#536174: xen-utils-3.4: pygrub searches for filesystem plugins at the wrong path

[Anders Kaseorg]

The Debian Xen packaging has been carrying a long pile of invasive patches 
to use this modified filesystem layout for quite some time now.  I assume 
the goal is to make it possible to install multiple versions of Xen at the 
same time.  But that doesn’t seem to have been successful in practice 
(e.g. #536173, #536176).

These patches make the Xen package extraordinarily difficult to modify or 
upgrade (I’ve tried!).  Every added component requires another set of 
patches, and every new upstream version requires rewriting many of the 
existing patches.  I can only assume that this difficulty at least 
partially to blame for the gap of more than a year between these last two 
Xen releases in Debian (#526833).

Furthermore, users who read the upstream Xen documentation (#508139), as 
well as programs that try to use the Xen binaries (#481105) or libraries 
(#507186), get thrown off by the alternate layout.

Is there actually a use case for installing multiple versions of Xen on 
the same system?  Perhaps it is time to reconsider them and use a layout 
closer to upstream’s?  Or if not, perhaps the patches can be sent upstream 
and integrated as a supported configure option, so that Debian does not 
need to maintain an unsupported layout separately?

Anders