Re: dpkg --force default?
> > If all file conflict problems are solved, force shouldn't be activated in
> > stable either. I think that was the original plan...
>
> Not to my knowledge.
It was. And the idea is to protect end users from bad packages, probably
not coming from Debian.
Some old mails from when the issue was debated (sorry for this long message):
-----------------------
Subject: Re: Policy on pkgs with same filename and QA rant (was: Re: Mercury compiler (pol icy, anybody)?)
From: Guy Maor <maor@ece.utexas.edu>
Date: 05 Mar 1997 11:50:37 -0600
[...]
A long term goal is for dpkg to have the --force-overwrite flag off by
default. Brian - you should probably add that to your list as things
to do for future versions.
[...]
---------------------
Subject: Re: Why does dpkg overwrite files?
From: Guy Maor <maor@ece.utexas.edu>
Date: 06 Mar 1997 14:43:36 -0600
Andy Mortimer <andy.mortimer@poboxes.com> writes:
> And is there any reason why I shouldn't use
> --refuse-overwrite in dpkg-mountable, and report bugs against packages
> which include the same file as each other?
No reason at all. Please do file the bugs.
When --force-overwrite was first introduced into dpkg, it was off by
default and caused many problems. We decided to *temporarily* turn it
on until all the packages could be fixed.
Guy
-------------------
From: Nicolás Lichtmaier <nick@feedback.com.ar>
Subject: Re: Why does dpkg overwrite files?
On 6 Mar 1997, Guy Maor wrote:
> When --force-overwrite was first introduced into dpkg, it was off by
> default and caused many problems. We decided to *temporarily* turn it
> on until all the packages could be fixed.
Perhaps it should be turned off in unstable releases, and on in stable ones.
Perhaps, many utilities could automatically change their behaviour to be
more restrictive when they detect that they're runing in an ustable
distribution (there could be a /etc/debian-status) ...
Nicolás Lichtmaier.-
nick@feedback.com.ar
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