Re: pkg/56597 (Deinstallation of compat90 destroys netbsd-9)

[Havard Eidnes <he%NetBSD.org@localhost>]

That was .. unexpected.

I see the submitter reports with 9.99.85.  By the looks of it,
the compat90 package was generated against

NetBSD 9.99.92 (GENERIC) #0: Fri Nov 12 15:12:11 UTC 2021

Was there any major version bumps between 9.99.85 and 9.99.92?

Hm, the package has (among others)

ONLY_FOR_PLATFORM=      NetBSD-9.*-*

but I also see (practical experience from a mistake I did earlier
today) that the package can be installed on NetBSD 9.2.  How is
that even possible?!?  And the above pattern doesn't match
9.99.<x> either, I suppose?

Perhaps the above pattern should have been NetBSD-9.99.*, but
then again, the submitter reported 9.99.85 and still had the
problem?  Also, 9.99.85 is not netbsd-9, so it's not entirely
clear against which version this report is submitted.

When I installed compat90 on NetBSD 9.2, I did notice that the
installation noted that "target exists", perhaps unsurprisingly.

Hm, seems like the +ROOT_ACTIONS script of the package, from
../compat_netbsd/INSTALL.ELF is responsible for managing the
symlinks, it will not replace a file or preexisting symlink, but
on de-install and the target was already a symlink, it will be
summarily removed...  Perhaps the INSTALL.ELF script should as an
added level of security verify that the symlink actually points
to the intended target before removing it, instead of just
testing whether it's a symlink, given the prevalent use of
symlinks in shared library handling?

So, can someone please explain what ONLY_FOR_PLATFORM should look
like to prevent installation of this on netbsd-9, and possibly on
any -current older than 9.99.92?

A separate question is also why compat90 was deemed to be
required on netbsd-9, presumably by other parts of pkgsrc?  That
should not be needed AFAIK; there's not been any major shared lib
bumps between 9.0 to 9.2 or even going to 9.2_STABLE.

Regards,

- Håvard