Bug#2624: textutils needs to break fmt-related files out separately

[Bill Mitchell <mitchell@mdd.comm.mot.com>]

david@elo.ods.com (David Engel) said:

> > My understanding is that, in order to avoid this, it is necessary
> > for these files to be broken out of the textutils binary package
> > into a separate binary package, so that other packages (e.g. the
> > elvis fmt package) installing alternate implementations of the
> > fmt(1) program may declare a conflict with this new package.
>
> IMO, this is getting much too granular.  Why can't the elvis package
> either not install fmt at all and depend on the one in textutils or

I don't know about its current status, but the textutils fmt program
used to be broken in various ways where the elvis fmt program wasn't
broken.  I don't know if the textutils fmt program has been fixed
or not.

However, the elvis fmt package didn't appear for the purpose of providing
a working alternative to the textutils fmt package, it just happened
to work out that way.  elv-fmt appeared because the files it supplies are
part of the stuff supplied by elvis editor source package.  If the
gods of the debian distribution see fit to proclaim that the elvis fmt
program is not to be included in the distribution, I'll withdraw it.

> simply use dpkg-divert to avoid conflicting with the one in textutils?

dpkg-divert is a new one on me.  What's that?

Do you perhaps mean update-alternatives?  That'd be OK
with me but, like this conflicts business, requires coordination
between the two separate package maintainers.  If the textutils
package maintainer would rather coordinate the use of update-alternatives
than coordinate the use of conflicts, that's OK with me.  In order
to use update-alternatives, we'll need to coordinate "priority" levels
for the elvis and the textutils versions of the fmt program and
manpage.  I'm amenable to whatever the textutils package maintainer
thinks is appropriate.