On Thu, Jun 23, 2005 at 11:45:26AM -0300, Margarita Manterola wrote: > On 6/23/05, Steve Greenland <steveg@moregruel.net> wrote: > > > The one I can think of is honouring the "Replaces:" field, meaning > > > that when a package states that it replaces another one, apt, > > > aptitude, dselect, and all the others would install it to replace of > > > the old one. > > That is not what "Replaces:" means, and changing dpkg to do what you > > want would break a lot of existing packages that are NOT mis-using it. > > See the dpkg docs for what "Replaces:" actually does. > The documentation for this is in the Debian Policy: > http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-relationships.html#s7.5.2 > And basically, what it says is that if a package "Replaces:" and > "Conflicts:" with another package, the new one is completely replacing > the old one. > So, when both "Replaces:" and "Conflicts:" are there, and it is not a > virtual-package, it would trigger apt replacing the package. But there is nothing in policy that says you can't have multiple packages that Conflicts: and Replaces: the same package. How is apt supposed to know which of these packages to install as the replacement? Also, the Conflicts: and Replaces: fields are frequently overused and abused in packages currently. Adding an additional meaning will only make the problem worse. > > > Is there a better solution to this? > > I think that there have been proposals for a new header that > > accomplishes what you want, > Well, a new header would be nice, of course. But it would mean a > change in policy, that's why I was thinking of using the existing > ones. Changing the meaning of existing fields is far worse than changing policy to accomodate a new field. -- Steve Langasek postmodern programmer
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