What's worse: unowned directories or multiple owners?

[Ralf Corsepius]

On Tue, 2006-03-28 at 20:05 +0200, Michael Schwendt wrote:
> On Tue, 28 Mar 2006 19:39:30 +0200, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> 
> > On Tue, 2006-03-28 at 10:32 -0700, Orion Poplawski wrote:
> > > Maybe the third time is the charm:
> > > 
> > > I want to install a file into /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/ but I don't 
> > > want to Requires: /usr/share/emacs/site-list/.
> > It would have to be
> > Requires(pre): usr/share/emacs/site-list
> > because otherwise rpm won't be able to handle this correctly.
> 
> $ repoquery --whatprovides /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp
> desktop-file-utils-0:0.10-6.1.i386
> subversion-0:1.3.0-4.2.i386
> autoconf-0:2.59-7.noarch
> emacs-el-0:21.4-14.i386
> libidn-0:0.6.2-1.1.i386
> emacs-common-0:21.4-14.i386
> fedora-rpmdevtools-0:1.5-1.fc5.noarch
> gforth-0:0.6.2-6.fc5.i386
> flim-0:1.14.7-3.noarch
> 
> $ repoquery --whatprovides /usr/share/emacs
> emacs-el-0:21.4-14.i386
> emacs-leim-0:21.4-14.i386
> emacs-common-0:21.4-14.i386
> fedora-rpmdevtools-0:1.5-1.fc5.noarch
> gforth-0:0.6.2-6.fc5.i386
> 
> All of these packages claim that they provide Emacs' data directory and
> would satisfy above "Requires(pre)". This is is harmless as long as you
> get what you want:
It's not harmless: It adds a dependency on a package providing this
directory. Not using a dependency on the directory, but simply owning it
would make this package independent of any package providing this
directory.

This is nasty when a package actually is independent of any emacs
variant and only carries some convenience macros, which are useful for
emacs users (For example, autoconf is one of these packages)

In this case, the "Requires" would be wrong.
 
> > Of cause there exists the permission's issue on multiply owned dirs, but
> > if packages are packaged correctly and don't try to play tricks with
> > ownerships/permissions, this should be a non-issue.
> 
> What works with /usr/share/emacs may fail with other directories.
Yes, but this question was on "/usr/share/emacs"

Ralf