Package: dpkg Version: 1.18.4ubuntu1.4 Severity: normal scripts/Dpkg/Source/Patch.pm has the following code:
while (1) { if (-l $path) { error(g_('diff %s modifies file %s through a symlink: %s'), $diff, $fn{$key}, $path); } $diff is a patch file in debian/patches/*.patch. $path is the path within package's source tree. The idea here is to prevent dpkg from ever overwriting files from outside the source tree (CVE-2010-1679). This protection is overly-broad, because I cannot modify any files that happen to be symlinks at all. In particular I want to create a debian .patch file that updates the destination of a symlink in my package's tree. If I use git-buildpackage to manage my changes in a patch-queue branch, "git-buildpackage pq export" will generate debian .patches that update symlink destinations, but then dpkg-source cannot process these .patch files. -- System Information: Debian Release: stretch/sid APT prefers xenial-updates APT policy: (500, 'xenial-updates'), (500, 'xenial-security'), (500, 'xenial'), (100, 'xenial-backports') Architecture: amd64 (x86_64) Kernel: Linux 4.18.8-200.fc28.x86_64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores) Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C (charmap=ANSI_X3.4-1968) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash Init: unable to detect Versions of packages dpkg depends on: ii libbz2-1.0 1.0.6-8 ii libc6 2.23-0ubuntu10 ii liblzma5 5.1.1alpha+20120614-2ubuntu2 ii libselinux1 2.4-3build2 ii tar 1.28-2.1ubuntu0.1 ii zlib1g 1:1.2.8.dfsg-2ubuntu4.1 dpkg recommends no packages. Versions of packages dpkg suggests: ii apt 1.2.27 -- no debconf information