Hello @all.

Since bugs #16694 and #16378 are somewhat loosely connected, I am
posting this to both.

The attached patches have been tested quite a bit locally and especially
the fix for #16378 has gone through several revisions to cover all
corner cases and side-effects.

The first two patches should be quite safe to apply. Naturally I would
appreciate any testing and feedback. :)

The last patch is not required to fix any bugs (though it might), it
just cleans up a bit but introduces a backwards incompatible change on
the way which should (imho) not be a problem. That one is more a RFC but
works just fine on my system as well and I think applying it to the tree
shouldn't be trouble.

If there are any questions or problems, please let me know.

So long,
Matthias