Bugzilla Bug 211534

Things like: `dosym "${PORTDIR}"/licenses/GPL-2 /usr/share/${PN}/COPYING` are
clearly a policy violation. I seriously have to wonder what made you think that
was a good idea. What happens when a user decides that /usr/portage is an awful
place for PORTDIR and decides to move it? It is debateable whether installing
things from ${PORTDIR} at all in an ebuild is legal but symlinking to it is
just wrong.

Furthermore in these cases you shouldn't be installing COPYING files at all
(see the Note). So please just get rid if it.

Packages affected are sci-mathematics/wxmaxima, dev-lang/R and
sci-astronomy/celestia.

http://devmanual.gentoo.org/ebuild-writing/functions/src_install/index.html

Created an attachment (id=144680) [edit]
affected ebuilds

In these packages the COPYING file is needed while either browsing the doc
(such as in R) or in a GUI Help menu (such as in wxmaxima and celestia). 
Simply removing these files won't work and will not respect upstream. So I
guess installing them (and thus duplicating them) will solve this issue so
kindly reported, unless you have a better solution.

drac notified me that dev-util/geany is affected too via:

geany-0.12.ebuild:36:   local licdir="${PORTDIR}/licenses"
geany-0.12.ebuild:37:   local lic="${licdir}/GPL-2"
geany-0.12.ebuild:38:   sed -i -e "s:@GEANY_DATA_DIR@/GPL-2:${lic}:"
doc/geany.1.in
geany-0.12.ebuild:39:   sed -i -e "s:\"GPL-2\", app->datadir:\"GPL-2\",
\"${licdir}\":" src/about.c

so pulling him in on the bug too.

(In reply to comment #2)
> So I guess installing them (and thus duplicating them) will solve this issue
> so kindly reported, unless you have a better solution.

Yes, I probably should have been more polite, but the dosym to PORTDIR really
made me go 'WTF?'. And yes, installing them properly will fix this bug.

As far as I'm concerned there really is no question, that making packages have
runtime dependencies like this on $PORTDIR is a no-go. If either of you
disagree with this we can pull in qa@ and wait for their opinion.

Marking geany bump request as blocker as requested by drac.

wxmaxima, R and celestia fixed.

Fixed in Geany 0.13.. 

Unfortunately we have a empty License page in About box now. Not sure how this
should be solved, but I don't see installing the GPL-2 _I already have_ in
$PORTDIR as a option at all.

(In reply to comment #6)
> Fixed in Geany 0.13.. 
> 
> Unfortunately we have a empty License page in About box now. Not sure how this
> should be solved, but I don't see installing the GPL-2 _I already have_ in
> $PORTDIR as a option at all.

If you want it to display in the About box, the only solution is for you to
install it.  Symlinking to $PORTDIR (a value that the user can change and move
their tree somewhere else), is not a good idea at all.  Installing the COPYING
file in these cases is acceptable, but you should throw a comment into the
ebuild stating why you have to do it.