On Mon, 2021-11-22 at 12:24 +0000, Simon McVittie wrote: > Options to make path A an alias for path B would be a lot like --path- > exclude in that they really only make sense in a configuration file in > /etc/dpkg/dpkg.cfg.d, although for symmetry they would presumably also > have to exist as command-line options just like --path-exclude does.
I would expect using --path-exclude when installing individual packages to work: you just don't get the files from that package. (I haven't tried.) Merged-/usr (or --path-alias as you propose) does not work like this: Unlike --path-exclude, you would almost always need to specify a superset of --path-alias options for all future operations. So I do not think there should be a command-line option for this; unless it would behave like `--add-architecture` and register the setting somewhere. > # in /etc/dpkg/dpkg.cfg.d/merged-usr > path-alias=/bin=usr/bin > path-alias=/lib32=usr/lib32 > path-alias=/lib64=usr/lib64 > path-alias=/lib=usr/lib > path-alias=/libo32=usr/libo32 > path-alias=/libx32=usr/libx32 > path-alias=/sbin=usr/sbin I do not think this should be a configuration file (unless you suggest supporting other values or removing individual lines; after all a configuration file exists to be changed). (Though we have various other settings that don't make sense as configuration files in /etc, such as Debian's bugtracker and other settings in /etc/dpkg/origins/debian, the version in /etc/debian_version and so on.) Ansgar
