Ben Gertzfield <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I would be extremely happy if Debian decided to drop the new way and > just join the rest of the distributions with the (admittedly not the > best way) symlinks. Yes, I've read the rationale for doing it our way, > but it breaks *so much software*. Debian is really the odd man out > here; there is tons of software out there that depends on those > symlinks being there that violating FHS just to prove a point gets us > nothing but incompatibility. > > Just for examples, I cite VMWare and OSS as two packages that fail > miserably on a Debian system because it's so different.
OSS I know about, it's got other problems too and of course it's being replaced. VMWare I know nothing about. Are you supposed to recompile it every time you change kernel versions? And does it really not let you specify -I/usr/local/src/linux/include/ ? Anyways, two examples is hardly "tons of software". Also, I've not tested dpkg-divert for handling of these two directories, but if it doesn't do the right thing I'd report that as a bug. [Perhaps a wishlist item, but a bug nonetheless.] Anyways, there's nothing about the existence of that symlink that really fixes such software. It's the "implied guarantee" that the headers are the same version as the running kernel that's the issue. And software which requires that, to be built, is going to cause a lot more problems in the long run -- breaking Debian isn't going to fix that. -- Raul
