Bug#1039979: /var/run and /var/lock should not be absolute symlinks

On Fri, Feb 20, 2026 at 12:40:33PM +0000, Simon McVittie wrote:
> On Fri, 20 Feb 2026 at 12:22:38 +0100, Santiago Vila wrote:
> > While we are at it, I wonder if we could actually deprecate those
> > locations for forky, and what would be the steps for doing so.
> 
> Which meaning of deprecated do you have in mind: the one where we discourage
> its use but it continues to work indefinitely, or the one where we plan to
> make it stop working? For /var/run, I think the first would be fine but the
> second would not.

I was actually thinking about actively encouraging everybody to do the
switch by dropping /var/run in unstable to see what breaks, but with
the intent of restoring it before forky becomes stable.

I believe we have done that sort of thing in the past (i.e. intentionally
breaking things in unstable in a reversible way), but I'm not sure if
this stragegy would be ok for /var/run at this point, or when it could be.

Thanks.