Package: libcec Version: 2.0.3-1 Severity: normal Dear maintainer,
I'm writing to you as the maintainer of lockdev (liblockdev1). I've opened this bug because your package either has a build-depends on liblockdev1-dev or is building binary packages with a dependency on liblockdev1. lockdev implements a library interface around the SYSV-style UUCP device locks for TTY devices. However, this type of locking is deprecated and unnecessary, at least on Linux; I'm not sure of the status on kFreeBSD. The recommended alternative is direct use of flock(2) on the corresponding device node. This will ensure that locking will work properly with other programs also locking the device node, and since the locks are implemented in the kernel, there's no need for racy creation and deletion of lockfiles with the owner PID, and no possibility of PID clashes or failure to reclaim lost locks if the PID is reused. That is to say, the flock(2) interface is guaranteed to be robust, while lockdev is not. For users not using the C API (for example scripts), flock(1) from util-linux provides a wrapper. I'd like to remove lockdev entirely for jessie, providing that it's possible to do so without breakage. Likewise I'd also like to convert packages using UUCP-style locks which don't use lockdev. We currently have at least three methods of device locking (UUCP-with-lockdev, UUCP-without-lockdev and direct-flock), all of which have overlapping or completely orthogonal semantics, which will result in not respecting the other lock types if used in combination. Hence the need to reduce this to a single robust locking strategy: just locking the device directly. It would be greatly appreciated if you could disable/remove lockdev support from your package and remove it from the source build-depends and/or package depends as appropriate, replacing this with flock(2) calls instead of dev_lock and dev_unlock. Many thanks, Roger Leigh -- System Information: Debian Release: jessie/sid APT prefers unstable APT policy: (550, 'unstable'), (400, 'experimental') Architecture: amd64 (x86_64) Kernel: Linux 3.11-1-amd64 (SMP w/8 CPU cores) Locale: LANG=en_GB.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org