[Pkg-zsh-devel] Bug#632514: zsh: architecture-dependent files in /usr/share

[Axel Beckert]

Package: zsh
Version: 4.3.12-1
Severity: serious

Since the bug fix for http://bugs.debian.org/430472 zsh ships so called
"zsh word code" (.zwc) files in the binary package and installs them
under /usr/share.

Unfortunately this kind of byte code is not identical on all
architectures. It seems to differ between big endian and little endian
architectures. An example:

sparc:    abb2a53ddac4e191e7a0aef3f7c7c01d  /usr/share/zsh/functions/VCS_Info/Backends.zwc
powerpc:  abb2a53ddac4e191e7a0aef3f7c7c01d  /usr/share/zsh/functions/VCS_Info/Backends.zwc
mips:     abb2a53ddac4e191e7a0aef3f7c7c01d  /usr/share/zsh/functions/VCS_Info/Backends.zwc
i386:     02d39ad457fd9eb51d8070be584d0e4b  /usr/share/zsh/functions/VCS_Info/Backends.zwc
amd64:    02d39ad457fd9eb51d8070be584d0e4b  /usr/share/zsh/functions/VCS_Info/Backends.zwc
armel:    02d39ad457fd9eb51d8070be584d0e4b  /usr/share/zsh/functions/VCS_Info/Backends.zwc
kf-i386:  02d39ad457fd9eb51d8070be584d0e4b  /usr/share/zsh/functions/VCS_Info/Backends.zwc
kf-amd64: 02d39ad457fd9eb51d8070be584d0e4b  /usr/share/zsh/functions/VCS_Info/Backends.zwc

Looking at the difference between the two file variants with vbindiff
shows that the difference indeed seems to be in byte ordering:

i386:  0000 0000: 07 06 05 04 01 04 78 00  34 2E 33 2E 31 32 00 00  ......x. 4.3.12..
sparc: 0000 0000: 04 05 06 07 01 04 78 00  34 2E 33 2E 31 32 00 00  ......x. 4.3.12..
                  ^^^^^^^^^^^

I'm not yet sure what's the best way to fix this. Many ideas come to my
mind:

a) Putting them in /usr/lib and make zsh search there

b) Putting them in /usr/lib and make symlinks to them in /usr/share

c) Generating them in postinst again, putting them in /var/lib and make
   zsh search there

d) Generating them in postinst again, putting them in /var/lib and make
   symlinks to them in /usr/share

e) Make two arch-independent packages, one called zsh-zwc-le and only to
   be built on little endian architectures and one called zsh-zwc-be and
   only to be built on big endian architectures. (This hack is probably
   only policy-conforming if the files are installed in different
   directories afterwards, i.e. if zsh-zwc-le and zsh-zwc-be could be
   installed in parallel.)

f) Let upstream make the .zwc file format endianess-independent.

Solution e) would be the most disk space saving one and solution b) the
least intrusive one. So I currently prefer one of these two solutions,
although a) is also appealing. But I have not yet an idea how intrusive
solution a) would be.

I'm also not yet sure if this is an issue for upstream, too.

Lintian argued: I: zsh: arch-dep-package-has-big-usr-share 9122kB 84%

Out of these 9 MB, approximately 5 MB come from those .zwc files(*). So
solution e) is not so far-fetched as it may have seemed initially.

(*) Determined using "dpkg -L zsh | fgrep .zwc | xargs ls -l | awk
    '{printf $5"+"}; END {print "0"}' | bc -l"

-- System Information:
Debian Release: wheezy/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (990, 'unstable'), (600, 'testing'), (400, 'stable'), (110, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.26-2-xen-amd64 (SMP w/1 CPU core)
Locale: LANG=en_US.ISO-8859-15, LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO-8859-15 (charmap=ISO-8859-15)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages zsh depends on:
ii  libc6                         2.13-8     Embedded GNU C Library: Shared lib
ii  libcap2                       1:2.21-1   support for getting/setting POSIX.
ii  libncursesw5                  5.9-1      shared libraries for terminal hand

Versions of packages zsh recommends:
ii  libc6                         2.13-8     Embedded GNU C Library: Shared lib
ii  libpcre3                      8.12-3     Perl 5 Compatible Regular Expressi

Versions of packages zsh suggests:
ii  zsh-doc                       4.3.12-1   zsh documentation - info/HTML form

-- no debconf information