Bug#1091995: Call for votes

Matthew Vernon <[email protected]> Wed, 26 Feb 2025 18:41:51 +0000

Newsgroups	gmane.linux.debian.devel.ctte
Message-ID	<5cc2869e-0a61-4fda-9a85-a4a0f2b2962c__21850.7709608943$1740595530$gmane$org@debian.org>


On 25/02/2025 20:59, Matthew Garrett wrote:
> I call for votes on the below ballot. The vote is open for 7 days, or
> until the outcome is beyond doubt.
> 
> In Bug #1091995, the Technical Committe was asked to rule on an issue
> that could, under certain circumstances, result in failure of the
> base-files package to install or upgrade correctly. Under these
> circumstances, systemd will create a symlink from /lib64 to /usr/lib,
> which does not match the symlink contained within base-files. base-files
> will detect this case in preinst and generate an error, but if it did
> not do this then dpkg would instead fail with a less verbose message.
> 
> Policy does not currently define ownership of the usrmerge filesystem
> aliases, but since trixie base-files has effectively been responsible
> for ensuring that these aliases are configured appropriately. This is
> therefore a technical disagreement rather than a policy violation.
> 
> A) The Technical Committee affirms that base-files should own all
> top-level filesystem aliases, and packages that conflict with this must
> be patched in Debian to avoid creating any aliases that conflict with
> base-files (overrules the systemd maintainer, requires 3:1 majority
> vote)
> 
> B) The Technical Committee requests that base-files create an empty
> /usr/lib64 directory, even on architectures that do not use lib64. If
> systemd creates a symlink, this will then match the behaviour of
> base-files and avoid the issue (overrules the base-files maintainer,
> requires 3:1 majority vote)
> 
> C) The Technical Committee requests that base-files preinst check
> whether /lib64 is a symlink to /usr/lib and, if so, replace it with a
> symlink to /usr/lib64 (overrules the base-files maintainer, requires 3:1
> majority vote)
> 
> N) None of the above / Further Discussion

I vote: A > N > B = C

ISTM that base-files is the right place to "own" top-level aliases, and 
I've not seen any convincing arguments otherwise.

Thanks,

Matthew

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