Re: Summary of Package Overlaps

[dark@xs4all.nl (Richard Braakman)]

Guy Maor wrote:
> Juan Cespedes <cespedes@debian.org> writes:
> 
> > 	I don't think this is enough; it should be checked against
> > packages in `bo' too.
> 
> Yes, if we want to remove the --force-overwrite flag from hamm,
> examples like this need to use Replaces if the move is legitimate.

I think the specific case of xless and linux86 should have xless
Replacing and Conflicting with linux86, since linux86 is an obsolete
package.  (Unless the proper solution is, as I suspect, to remove the
regexp.3 manpage from xless.)

If a file has moved from one package to another, wouldn't versioned
Conflicts and Replaces be the best solution?  There is a paragraph
in the packaging manual that forbids them:

   A Conflicts entry should almost never have an `earlier than' version
   clause. This would prevent dpkg from upgrading or installing the
   package which declared such a conflict until the upgrade or removal of
   the conflicted-with package had been completed. This aspect of
   installation ordering is not handled by dselect, so that the use
   Conflicts in this way is likely to cause problems for `bulk run'
   upgrades and installations.

However, I hope we plan to solve the installation-ordering problem
before 2.0.  The paragraph above seems to address the wrong side of
the problem.  ("Doctor, it hurts when I do like this."  "Well don't do
like that then.")

Richard Braakman


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