I recently noticed that many of the binary packages in Debian have unnecessary
empty directories in them, so I wrote a script to find all packages with any
empty directories. The results are too numerous to post on the list. The
list by maintainer/uploader is at
http://people.debian.org/~schepler/empty-dirs-maint.txt
and the full list of empty directories found is at
http://people.debian.org/~schepler/empty-dirs.txt .

Obviously, a lot of these will be false positives, so I definitely won't file
mass bugs based on this list without checking the full details first.
--
Daniel Schepler


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On 21/11/2007, Daniel Schepler wrote:
> Obviously, a lot of these will be false positives, so I definitely
> won't file mass bugs based on this list without checking the full
> details first.

Maybe suggesting a lintian check would be a good idea?

Cheers,

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Cyril Brulebois

On Tuesday 20 November 2007 10:26:39 pm Cyril Brulebois wrote:
> On 21/11/2007, Daniel Schepler wrote:
> > Obviously, a lot of these will be false positives, so I definitely
> > won't file mass bugs based on this list without checking the full
> > details first.
>
> Maybe suggesting a lintian check would be a good idea?
>
> Cheers,

It would be hard to write a check without numerous false positives. Under
those circumstances I think they would be classified as "I:" messages, which
hardly anybody would see anyway. I suppose it would be possible to write a
check for empty /usr/sbin, /usr/bin, /etc, ... in packages != base-files, but
that would miss a lot of cases.
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Daniel Schepler schrieb:
> I recently noticed that many of the binary packages in Debian have unnecessary
> empty directories in them, so I wrote a script to find all packages with any
> empty directories. The results are too numerous to post on the list. The
> list by maintainer/uploader is at
> http://people.debian.org/~schepler/empty-dirs-maint.txt
> and the full list of empty directories found is at
> http://people.debian.org/~schepler/empty-dirs.txt .
>
> Obviously, a lot of these will be false positives, so I definitely won't file
> mass bugs based on this list without checking the full details first.

All of my packages listed there are false positives. What I noticed
though, are a lot of packages, shipping empty /usr/sbin, /usr/bin/,
/usr/lib/ or /usr/include directories.
This directories, very likely, come from dh-make *.dirs templates.
Imo these template files are wrong and should be cleaned up.
There is no point in creating directories for /usr/bin etc. if "make
install" will create them automatically when installing the
binaries/libs/headers.
Imho *.dirs files should only be used for directories which aren't
automatically created by "make install".

Cheers,
Michael

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Daniel Schepler schrieb:
> On Tuesday 20 November 2007 10:26:39 pm Cyril Brulebois wrote:
>> On 21/11/2007, Daniel Schepler wrote:
>>> Obviously, a lot of these will be false positives, so I definitely
>>> won't file mass bugs based on this list without checking the full
>>> details first.
>> Maybe suggesting a lintian check would be a good idea?
>>
>> Cheers,
>
> It would be hard to write a check without numerous false positives. Under
> those circumstances I think they would be classified as "I:" messages, which
> hardly anybody would see anyway. I suppose it would be possible to write a
> check for empty /usr/sbin, /usr/bin, /etc, ... in packages != base-files, but
> that would miss a lot of cases.

Imho adding a lintian check for empty /usr/bin, /usr/sbin, /usr/lib and
/usr/include directories (as created by dh-make) would be a good start.

Cheers,
Michael

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Hi

On Tue, 20 Nov 2007 21:55:30 -0500
Daniel Schepler <schepler@math.unipd.it> wrote:

> I recently noticed that many of the binary packages in Debian have unnecessary
> empty directories in them,

How do you detect that the directory is "unnecessary"? It can be for
example used for storing data in /var.

> so I wrote a script to find all packages with any
> empty directories. The results are too numerous to post on the list. The
> list by maintainer/uploader is at
> http://people.debian.org/~schepler/empty-dirs-maint.txt
> and the full list of empty directories found is at
> http://people.debian.org/~schepler/empty-dirs.txt .
>
> Obviously, a lot of these will be false positives, so I definitely won't file
> mass bugs based on this list without checking the full details first.

I just checked my packages and all pure python modules using pycentral
have empty /usr/lib. This will be probably very usual cause of these
problems, just filed a bug for it. For the rest empty directories are
intentional, so false positives.

--
Michal ÄŒihaÅ™ | http://cihar.com | http://blog.cihar.com

Daniel Schepler wrote:
> Obviously, a lot of these will be false positives, so I definitely won't file
> mass bugs based on this list without checking the full details first.


Using python-support also creates false-positives. python-support relies
on having /usr/share/python-support/packagename/ available, even if
there're no arch independent modules in the package. If I remember right
python-support uses the directory to be able to clean up
/var/lib/python-support if necessary - or something like that.


--
Bernd Zeimetz
<bernd@bzed.de> <http://bzed.de/>


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Am Mittwoch, den 21.11.2007, 05:11 +0100 schrieb Michael Biebl:
> All of my packages listed there are false positives. What I noticed
> though, are a lot of packages, shipping empty /usr/sbin, /usr/bin/,
> /usr/lib/ or /usr/include directories.
> This directories, very likely, come from dh-make *.dirs templates.
> Imo these template files are wrong and should be cleaned up.

gromacs-openmpi is false positive. The empty /usr/bin results from bugs
451991/452047.

Best regards
Manuel

Hi,

Le mercredi 21 novembre 2007 à 05:20 +0100, Michael Biebl a écrit :
> Imho adding a lintian check for empty /usr/bin, /usr/sbin, /usr/lib and
> /usr/include directories (as created by dh-make) would be a good start.

Maybe we could check for empty directories except for a number of common
false positives (like the python-support directories or /var/games), and
for the rest, grep in the maintainer scripts.

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* Josselin Mouette <joss@debian.org> [071121 10:08]:
> Maybe we could check for empty directories except for a number of common
> false positives (like the python-support directories or /var/games), and
> for the rest, grep in the maintainer scripts.

And menu-methods (which cause a lot of false-positives on that list),
and possible many more...

Hochachtungsvoll,
Bernhard R. Link


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