On 26 Jun 1998, Manoj Srivastava wrote: > Hi, > >>"Bdale" == Bdale Garbee <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > Bdale> If you're working in a multi-machine networked environment, > Bdale> and are accessing another system using NFS (particularly with > Bdale> an automounted host map), an absolute link can easily violate > Bdale> "the principle of least astonishment"... if you are tracking > Bdale> down a remote machine's filesystems, and cross an absolute > Bdale> symbolic link, you're back on your local system's filesystem! > Bdale> That's almost never what you meant, or what you wanted. > > On the other hand, if you are using automount, or AFS, or DFS, > or even, in some environments, NFS, you may keep all mounts > under, say, /mnt (eg /usr -> /mnt/i386/usr), in which case, any > relative links between top level directories loose. > > In this case, a relative symlink also violates the princple of > least astonishment, and indeed, does not even work. > > I think, on balance, the policy works for the most common > case. > > manoj >
Thanks for quoting Policy on this. Upon reading the "actual" text, I don't think this policy applies to libc6-dev. > > 3.3.5. Symbolic links > --------------------- > > In general, symbolic links within a toplevel directory should be > relative, and symbolic links pointing from one toplevel directory into > another should be absolute. (A toplevel directory is a sub-directory > of the root directory `/'.) Note: "from one toplevel directory into another" The links are from /usr/lib, which is a subdirectory of a top level directory. Yes, it points to a top level directory, but that only satifies one half of the above criterion. > > In addition, symbolic links should be specified as short as possible, > i.e., link targets like `foo/../bar' are depreciated. I guess I'm just stupid ;-) but I don't understand what the example is trying to tell me. Waiting is, Dwarf -- _-_-_-_-_- Author of "The Debian Linux User's Guide" _-_-_-_-_-_- aka Dale Scheetz Phone: 1 (850) 656-9769 Flexible Software 11000 McCrackin Road e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tallahassee, FL 32308 _-_-_-_-_-_- If you don't see what you want, just ask _-_-_-_-_-_-_- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]