I have a Debian package that installs a library and a symbolic link to the library. The symlinks end up being installed as empty directories. I would expect symlinks to be preserved. I'm using snapcraft version 2.19. As an example/repro, take the package libgweather. It installs a library and symlink to the library. mberger@bldecos-1:/var/cache/apt/archives$ dpkg -c libgweather-3-6_3.18.2-0ubuntu0.1_amd64.deb | grep "\.so" -rw-r--r-- root/root 153808 2016-09-14 08:27 ./usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgweather-3.so.6.5.0 lrwxrwxrwx root/root 0 2016-09-14 08:27 ./usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgweather-3.so.6 -> libgweather-3.so.6.5.0 The relevant snapcraft.yaml parts entry... parts: my-part: # See 'snapcraft plugins' plugin: dump source: /var/cache/apt/archives/libgweather-3-6_3.18.2-0ubuntu0.1_amd64.deb The result of the pull... mberger@bldecos-1:/builds2/mberger/bug$ ls -l parts/my-part/src/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/ total 156 drwxr-xr-x 2 mberger xcore 4096 Oct 19 05:31 libgweather-3.so.6 -rw-r--r-- 1 mberger xcore 153808 Sep 14 08:27 libgweather-3.so.6.5.0 Which finds its way into the snap. mberger@bldecos-1:/builds2/mberger/bug$ unsquashfs -ll my-snap-name_0.1_amd64.snap Parallel unsquashfs: Using 4 processors 56 inodes (400 blocks) to write ... drwxr-xr-x root/root 3 2016-10-19 05:31 squashfs-root/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgweather-3.so.6 -rw-r--r-- root/root 153808 2016-09-14 08:27 squashfs-root/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgweather-3.so.6.5.0 ...