Re: How to do dissapear-replace with dpkg

[Ian Jackson <ian@chiark.chu.cam.ac.uk>]

Miquel van Smoorenburg writes ("How to do dissapear-replace with dpkg"):
> This might have something to do with my previous mail message to
> debian-bugs. It is also with dpkg-1.1.3.
> 
> I have (finally!) created an inn package (inn1.4unoff4), and have
> some troubles. The source builds 2 binary packages: inn and inewsinn.
> Ofcourse inewsinn is a subset of inn, so I want inn to replace inewsinn
> when it is installed.
> 
> Now I have in the control file for inn:
> Provides: news-transport-system, inews
> Replaces: inews
> 
> I thought this would make it replace the existing inews package,
> but no:

No, a Replaces field won't work for a virtual package name.  The real
package name here is `inewsinn', so you need to say
  Conflicts: inewsinn
  Replaces: inewsinn

(The Conflicts is necessary to make sure that all the files in
inewsinn get removed and the package marked as deinstalled, rather
than just having some of the files overwritten.)

Ian.

> [Q:root](/project/debian/INN)> dpkg -i inn-1.4unoff4-1.deb      
> (Reading database ... 17198 files and directories currently installed.)
> Unpacking inn (from inn-1.4unoff4-1.deb) ...
> dpkg: error processing inn-1.4unoff4-1.deb (--install):
>  trying to overwrite `/etc/news/whoami', which is also in package inewsinn
> Errors were encountered while processing:
>  inn-1.4unoff4-1.deb