[pacman-dev] Pacman failing with existing symlinks on the install path

[Eli Schwartz]

On 2/4/19 6:09 PM, Peter Kehl wrote:
> Dear Pacman maintainers,
> 
> On current 4.19.16-1-MANJARO x64, I had /opt as  symlink to /share/opt. I
> went to install current Google Chrome 72.0.3626.81-1 from
> https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/google-chrome (either by GNOME's
> Add/Remove Software, or by sudo pacman -U google-chrome-72.0.3626.81-1-
> x86_64.pkg.tar.xz). It failed with:
> error: failed to commit transaction (conflicting files)
> google-chrome: /opt exists in filesystem
> 
> Knut Ahlers, the maintainer of AUR Google Chrome package, responded that
> the package doesn't check for the symlinks. Hence it's probably pacman.
> 
> Have you/would you consider supporting existing symlinks on the install
> paths, please?

No, this is utterly forbidden. Why do you want to install a file named
/opt which is a symlink pointing at /share/opt (something outside of the
filesystem hierarchy)?

-- 
Eli Schwartz
Bug Wrangler and Trusted User

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