Bug#671507: debian-policy: policy section 7.4 conflicts with section 10.1
On Fri, May 04, 2012 at 10:27:27AM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
>
> Patrick Ouellette <pouelle@debian.org> writes:
>
> > Policy 7.4 states
>
> > "Neither Breaks nor Conflicts should be used unless two packages cannot
> > be installed at the same time or installing them both causes one of them
> > to be broken or unusable. Having similar functionality or performing the
> > same tasks as another package is not sufficient reason to declare Breaks
> > or Conflicts with that package. "
>
> > 7.4 suggests it is appropriate to conflict if a package installs an
> > executable with the same name as another package but different
> > functionality.
>
> I'm not seeing where it suggests that personally, but I'm probably too
> close to it. We can certainly add a pointer to 10.1 here.
Sorry, I should have copied this part of 7.4 too:
"Conflicts should be used
when two packages provide the same file and will continue to do so"
If you read the entire section 7.4 is seems entirely reasonable to
create a package with an executable name that already exists in Debian
with a package conflicts tag if the two executables have different
functionality.
Section 10.1 says we can't ever do that. 10.1 also leaves open the
possibility of two executable with the same name in different packages
as long as the functionality is the same. This might not be a good thing
if one package later adds/removes functionality.
Pat
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