[Dict-common-dev] RFC: removing /usr/dict symlink?

[Agustin Martin Domingo]

Hi all,

Some time ago, we received a wishlist-bug (#110632, cc'ing its 
submitter) about keeping a bit longer a symbolic symlink at /usr/dict 
because there was still some documentation referring to that old 
location for /usr/dict/words. As a matter of fact some old docs refer to 
it as a list of english words, what is not true for us.

I vaguely remember to have taken a look at the FHS at that time and 
having seen that /usr/dict was no longer present, but that there was the 
possibility of still keeping some symlinks at /usr to avoid users be 
confused, although deprecating that (I might be wrong, that was some 
time ago, and later than the last published one, so I probably read an 
old one). So we provided such symlink.

That was about two years ago. Now we have received a wishlist bug with 
exactly the opposite will (#206074). I have looked again at the FHS 
(http://www.pathname.com/fhs/) and in the last released version (2.2., 
announced on May 24, 2001.) there is no trace of that /usr/dict dir. 
Since sarge is close to release, is time to decide whether /usr/dict 
will go in sarge for backwards compatibility or we prefer sarge to match 
the FHS as much as possible. Even if no Debian package should rely on 
that location, some very old programs might use it. So the question is 
whether Debian should provide that symlink or not.

With the current state of the FHS I am more for no longer providing that 
symlink, but would like to know other people point of view. In any case 
I would only stop providing that symlink, but not remove it unless 
dictionaries-common package is removed, so if a sysadmin wants to set 
that symlink it will not be removed at normal dictionaries-common upgrade.

Opinions?

Cheers,

-- 
Agustin