Bug#768079: [Pkg-zsh-devel] Bug#768079: zsh: fails to configure if /bin is a symlink to /usr/bin

[Axel Beckert]

Hi Sven,

Sven Joachim wrote:
> Personally I think zsh should stop using update-alternatives altogether
> now that zsh-beta is history, but this is for the package maintainers to
> decide.

Indeed, thanks for the reminder. I guess this bug report is a good
reason to implement that now.

I'll probably do an upload of a new release candidate to experimental
soon (like this weekend) and will try to fix this issue with that,
too.

I definitely don't want to upload a fix for this bug to unstable
directly as I assume that there will be unexpected side-effects of
such a change.

Regards, Axel
-- 
 ,''`.  |  Axel Beckert , http://people.debian.org/~abe/
: :' :  |  Debian Developer, ftp.ch.debian.org Admin
`. `'   |  4096R: 2517 B724 C5F6 CA99 5329  6E61 2FF9 CD59 6126 16B5
  `-|  1024D: F067 EA27 26B9 C3FC 1486  202E C09E 1D89 9593 0EDE

Bug#768079: [Pkg-zsh-devel] Bug#768079: zsh: fails to configure if /bin is a symlink to /usr/bin

[Felipe Sateler]

On 27 December 2015 at 13:11, Axel Beckert  wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Sven Joachim wrote:
>> On a system with everything in /usr[1,2], i.e. /bin is a symlink to
>> /usr/bin, zsh fails to configure:
>>
>> ,
>> | Setting up zsh (5.0.7-3) ...
>> | update-alternatives: using /bin/zsh5 to provide /bin/zsh (zsh) in auto mode
>> | update-alternatives: error: unable to install `/usr/bin/zsh.dpkg-tmp' as 
>> `/usr/bin/zsh': No such file or directory
>> | dpkg: error processing package zsh (--configure):
>> |  subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 2
>> | Errors were encountered while processing:
>> |  zsh
>> `
>>
>> I guess update-alternatives does not like the fact that the /bin/zsh
>> alternative and its slave /usr/bin/zsh are at the same place.
>
> Reading this comment and https://bugs.debian.org/807185, I wonder if
> this is not something, that update-alternatives should generally fix
> in its --slave handling instead of each affected package individually.

Checking wether a slave link is the same as the master link because of
usrmerge sounds a bit too specific to me to add to a low-level tool
like update-alternatives. It's like asking `ln -s file file` to do
nothing instead of returning an error.

If there is a bug here in u-a, it is that the error message is not very helpful.


-- 

Saludos,
Felipe Sateler

Bug#768079: [Pkg-zsh-devel] Bug#768079: zsh: fails to configure if /bin is a symlink to /usr/bin

[Axel Beckert]

Hi,

Sven Joachim wrote:
> On a system with everything in /usr[1,2], i.e. /bin is a symlink to
> /usr/bin, zsh fails to configure:
> 
> ,
> | Setting up zsh (5.0.7-3) ...
> | update-alternatives: using /bin/zsh5 to provide /bin/zsh (zsh) in auto mode
> | update-alternatives: error: unable to install `/usr/bin/zsh.dpkg-tmp' as 
> `/usr/bin/zsh': No such file or directory
> | dpkg: error processing package zsh (--configure):
> |  subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 2
> | Errors were encountered while processing:
> |  zsh
> `
> 
> I guess update-alternatives does not like the fact that the /bin/zsh
> alternative and its slave /usr/bin/zsh are at the same place.

Reading this comment and https://bugs.debian.org/807185, I wonder if
this is not something, that update-alternatives should generally fix
in its --slave handling instead of each affected package individually.

Cc'ing the Dpkg Developers.

Regards, Axel
-- 
 ,''`.  |  Axel Beckert , http://people.debian.org/~abe/
: :' :  |  Debian Developer, ftp.ch.debian.org Admin
`. `'   |  4096R: 2517 B724 C5F6 CA99 5329  6E61 2FF9 CD59 6126 16B5
  `-|  1024D: F067 EA27 26B9 C3FC 1486  202E C09E 1D89 9593 0EDE