[arch-dev-public] general packaging question about symlinks

[Dan McGee]

On Sun, Jul 26, 2009 at 12:45 PM, Aaron Griffin<aaronmgriffin at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 26, 2009 at 10:43 AM, Thomas Bächler<thomas at archlinux.org> wrote:
>> Andreas Radke schrieb:
>>>
>>> we have a bugreport to change a relative symlink to an absolute symlink
>>>
>>> http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/14895. I don't really get the point
>>> where there difference will be and if the links would be broken when
>>> using different filesystems/partitions and links in itself.
>>>
>>> I'd like to hear your opinions for a general packaging rule.
>>
>> Without reading the bug report: relative links are almost always better than
>> absolute ones.
>
> even when the relative link goes up to root? In this case the links
> are of the form ../../opt/openoffice/something - because the full path
> ends up in there _anyway_, I feel like the relative ../../ is
> unnecessary

I agree on this point- the relative symlink in this case adds no
convenience and only complexity. Maybe a more general rule can be
something along the lines of "if the link crosses a feasible location
for a mountpoint, use an absolute symlink"? For the most part, this
will entail anything passing through '/' should not be relative.

-Dan