Guillem Jover <[email protected]> writes: > On Mon, 2025-08-11 at 22:10:34 +0200, Ferenc Wágner wrote: > >> "man dpkg" says: >> >> DPKG_ROOT >> [...] When installing packages into a different instdir, dpkg >> normally invokes maintainer scripts using chroot(2) and leaves >> this variable empty, but if --force-script-chrootless is specified >> then the chroot(2) call is skipped and instdir is non-empty. >> >> The above would make more sense to me if the "instdir" reference in the >> last line was "DPKG_ROOT", so I suspect a typo here. Please fix the >> documentation or my confusion. > > This would be the directory that is being set when using --instdir, > which --root ends up setting as well as --admindir. > > Perhaps if that read closer to `--instdir` that would have been more > clear?
Hi Guillem, What I miss here is when dpkg sets the DPKG_ROOT variable to something non-empty. From the text I understand that dpkg sets DPKG_ROOT to the empty string when --root and --instdir are not set (so "normally"). Furthermore, dpkg also sets DPKG_ROOT to the empty string when --root or --instdir is set, *unless* --force-script-chrootless is also specified (because the maintainer scripts are run in a chroot then). So it would seem sensible if dpkg set DPKG_ROOT to the value of --instdir (or --root) if either of them is specified, *and* --force-script-chrootless is also specified. But the text does not say that, instead it contrasts DPKG_ROOT being empty with instdir being non-empty. This is unexpected, and I don't even understand instdir in the "Internal environment" context where this paragraph resides. I'm not sure I managed to express my difficulty any better now... -- Thanks, Feri.
