Bug 169457

Summary:	upgrade/reinstall removes empty directories
Product:	Portage Development	Reporter:	ic+gentoo
Component:	Core	Assignee:	Portage team <dev-portage>
Status:	RESOLVED DUPLICATE
Severity:	normal
Priority:	High
Version:	unspecified
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Package list:		Runtime testing required:	---

Description ic+gentoo 2007-03-05 14:25:49 UTC

When I install a package that has some empty directories, they are created in the filesystem. However, when the package is updated or reinstalled, those empty directories are removed. This is inconsistent.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. emerge -C hal ; rm -rf /etc/hal
2. emerge -1 hal ; ## directory /etc/hal exists with its subdirectories
3. emerge -1 hal ; ## directory /etc/hal doesn't exist anymore



Expected Results:  
After step 3, the empty directory tree in /etc/hal should not be removed.

emerging hal is just an example, probably there are a lot other examples. I doubt there is a quick workaround, it's the ebuild philosophy with empty directories that is wrong (IMO).

Comment 1 Jakub Moc (RETIRED) gentoo-dev

2007-03-05 14:34:50 UTC


*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 16162 ***

Comment 2 Zac Medico gentoo-dev

2007-03-05 17:46:23 UTC

(In reply to comment #0)
> Expected Results:  
> After step 3, the empty directory tree in /etc/hal should not be removed.

That's what keepdir is for (see `man 5 ebuild`).

Comment 3 SpanKY gentoo-dev

2007-03-06 17:11:25 UTC

keepdir should only be for keeping a directory after a package is removed completely

in the upgrade/reinstall path, portage should not be cleansing empty dirs ... but that's tracked in Bug 16162