Package: debian-policy
Version: 3.9.2.0
Severity: minor

The wording of section 10.5, where it says whether symlinks should be
absolute or relative, is not particularly clear if the symlink is to
a top-level file or directory rather than into one (such as a link from
/var/run to /run).  The intent was to require that these be absolute
links so that, were /var a symlink to some other location, the /var/run
symlink would still work properly.

The rationale should be mentioned in a non-normative footnote.

Carsten Hey suggests:

As already mentioned, I don't think the wording of §10.5 strictly
applies to the /run symlink.  "lib64 -> /lib" also somehow involves
different top-level directories, but (contrary to the /run symlink), the
reason why §10.5 is in the policy does not apply to it.


To match the original intention more closely and to clarify §10.5,

| symbolic links pointing from one top-level directory into another
| should be absolute

could be written as ("out of" was stolen from [1]):

| symbolic links pointing out of a top-level directory should be
| absolute

or alternatively as:

| symbolic links pointing from one top-level directory out of it should
| be absolute

-- System Information:
Debian Release: wheezy/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (990, 'testing'), (500, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.38-2-686-bigmem (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

debian-policy depends on no packages.

debian-policy recommends no packages.

Versions of packages debian-policy suggests:
ii  doc-base                      0.10.1     utilities to manage online documen

-- no debconf information



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