Bug#2828: Horrible aliasing problem (was xosview)

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

Raul Miller writes ("Bug#2828: Horrible aliasing problem (was xosview)"):
...
> (1) install twice  [slow, ugly, inappropriate, but stable].

Urgh.  It doesn't even solve the general problem where a package
contains files that are the same as those belonging to another
package, but dpkg can't tell because of an aliased directory.

> (2) stat directories so that you can recognize aliased directories.
> [Be careful to use the equivalent of $path/.]

I can do this to recognise aliases within a package (whether the same
version or different versions).

However, in order to spot aliases across packages (eg, one package
installs /usr/bin/X11/xfoo and another /usr/X11R6/bin/xfoo) I would
need to stat every directory listed in the dpkg databases every time
dpkg started up, and keep the stat information saved somewhere in
memory while it ran.  This would be very slow - especially at startup,
which is slow enough already.

Ian.