[systemd-devel] systemd-network-wait-online symlinks to systemd-networkd

[Lennart Poettering]

On Tue, 10.06.14 13:58, Mike Gilbert (floppym at gentoo.org) wrote:

> > Symlinks should probably just be considered different type of file, that
> > have a contents and stuff. The contents is usually a file name, and
> > there's a size limit, but other than that it's just a magic kind of
> > file, where the symlink destination is the conents. That's how git
> > handles this, for example.
> >
> > I have the suspicion that this is really something to fix in your
> > package manager. It should learn to handle symlink upgrades the same way
> > as configuration file upgrades....
> 
> The problem with installing these symlinks as part of a package is
> that the user may have removed them from /etc/systemd using systemctl
> disable. The next time they install systemd, the package puts the
> symlinks right back.

Again, that's exactly what happens for configuration files too if you
use automake: on "make install" they are replaced by the original,
upstream versions. Why is recreating the symlinks bad, if overriding the
config files isn't?

> Gentoo's Portage package manager has functionality to protect modified
> config files under /etc from being overwritten during reinstalls and
> upgrades. However, this protection does not apply to files which have
> been removed entirely by the sysadmin.

Well, this really sounds like a package manager deficiency. It should be
able to manage symlinks properly.

Lennart

-- 
Lennart Poettering, Red Hat