Bug 15821

Summary:	Empty directory is removed when directory is a symlink
Product:	[Yocto Project Subprojects] opkg	Reporter:	Mikael Pahmp <mikael.pahmp>
Component:	opkg	Assignee:	Alex Stewart <alex.stewart>
Status:	ACCEPTED ---	QA Contact:
Severity:	normal
Priority:	Medium
Version:	0.6.3
Target Milestone:	next-patch
Hardware:	x86
OS:	Multiple
Whiteboard:
OS type for building Yocto:	---	Type of Regression:	---
Verified:		Documentation change:	Don't know

Description Mikael Pahmp 2025-04-03 13:55:28 UTC

When an ipk package installs things into a directory and that directoy is actually a symlink to another directory, when the package is removed and was the only package to put things in that directory, opkg removes the symlink even though it points to a non-empty directory.

This happens for instance when installing into /lib which is often a symlink to /usr/lib.

This is not a problem when upgrading the only package having files in a directory, as long as the new version also have things in that directory, but if the new version doesn't, the symlink is removed. This is an issue when adapting a package to not install into /lib but instead install into /usr/lib.

Comment 1 Alex Stewart 2025-04-07 18:16:50 UTC

Thanks for the bug, Mikael.

Do you know how dpkg handles cases like this?

And also, I assume this bug is in an opkg release from after we added the autoremove functionality. But what version are you using specifically?

Comment 2 Mikael Pahmp 2025-04-10 10:04:56 UTC

Correction. This was not version 1.0 of opkg. It was 0.6.3 (not available to select among versions above) selected by yocto 5.0.7.

I do not know how dpkg handles this.