Description of problem: Kernels still seem to leave broken symlinks to dirs that should be "owned" by the "devel" package rather than the "core" package. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): Fedora release 23 (Twenty Three) How reproducible: Always if "devel" package is not installed. See also Bug 1185918 Steps to Reproduce: 1.# symlinks -r / | grep -i dangling | grep fc23 dangling: /usr/lib/modules/4.5.7-202.fc23.i686/build -> /usr/src/kernels/4.5.7-202.fc23.i686 dangling: /usr/lib/modules/4.5.7-202.fc23.i686/source -> build 2.file /usr/lib/modules/4.5.7-202.fc23.i686/build /usr/lib/modules/4.5.7-202.fc23.i686/build: broken symbolic link to /usr/src/kernels/4.5.7-202.fc23.i686 owned by: kernel-core-4.5.7-202.fc23.i686 file /usr/lib/modules/4.5.7-202.fc23.i686/source /usr/lib/modules/4.5.7-202.fc23.i686/source: broken symbolic link to build kernel-core-4.5.7-202.fc23.i686 3. Actual results: See above Expected results: Broken symlinks (Dangling) should not be present. Additional info:
One of our long term kernel maintainers found the reasons we have for keeping this as it is. Nothing has really changed, so we aren't going to move the symlinks. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 149210 ***
Really? what were his reasons? Broken means broken. The code should probably be better at working out what it should do rather than rely on what will probably be broken symlinks or symlinks generally (symlinks have always been a lazy way to fix something that usually bites later)
The reasons are in the bug I duplicated this against.
Sorry I'm not convinced that this could not be fixed in a more elegant way that maintains the files appropriately with no broken links.