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

[Allan McRae]

On 5/2/19 9:09 am, 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?
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> 

We do not support treating symlinks to directories as directories.  They
are considered a file.  My guess is Manjaro provides the /opt directory
in its filesystem package, so changing it to a symlink manually is
invalidating your pacman files database.

The correct solution is to use a bind mount.

Allan