Re: dpkg -L (was: Re: conflicts with libcap-dev)
>>>>> "Brian" == Brian Frederick Kimball <bfk@footbag.org> writes:
Brian> Huh? I didn't ask for that. I'm just saying that by
Brian> installing B with --force-overwrite, "dpkg -L A" stops
Brian> printing "/foo", and I found that to be really confusing at
Brian> first. Sorry for not being clear.
Personally I think the above situation is totally broken, and should
never happen. It could even damage your system, for instance if
libcom_err from heimdal-lib overwrote libcom_err from e2fsprogs, as
the two versions are incompatible and maintained by different upstream
authors. Currently they both have different major versions, so no
problem exists, but suppose this changes in a future version? Hence I
have always been against the use of --force-overwrite.
...so I don't think the documentation needs to be changed.
Instead, I think something badly needs to be done to prevent files in
multiple installed packages from conflicting in the first place.
I don't think it is right that maintainers are forced to maintain a
list of which other packages their package conflicts with, because I
believe this approach to be prone to error and impossible anyway.
(consider 3rd party repositories, eg Helix, and keeping track of what
files conflict between the two.)
However, I think you can reduce the problem down to:
How can apt-get determine if a package conflicts or not before it
has even down-loaded the package, if it can't rely on the Conflicts
header showing file conflicts.
Perhaps a compromise is required, eg: have apt-get down load the file
first, and then work out what installed packages it conflicts with,
before installation?
--
Brian May <bam@debian.org>
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