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Re: Self-conflicts and self-depends



Fabio Tranchitella <kobold@debian.org> writes:
> Il giorno mar, 25/07/2006 alle 18.10 -0700, Russ Allbery ha scritto:

>> So, are people sure this is not useful even if the package name doubles
>> as a virtual package?  It seems to me like it would be.  Or are people
>> just arguing that that case will never occur?

> Conflicts on virtual packages assure that two real packages providing
> the virtual one can't be installed togheter, so let's say:

> A: provides D; conflicts D
> B: provides D; conflicts D

> It is not possible to install both pkg A and pkg B because both provide
> pkg D and the other package conflicts with it.

Right.

> If we replace D with A, and remove the self-conflicts/self-provides, the
> situation would be:

> A: nothing;
> B: provides A; conflicts A

> ... which produces the same result, because you can't install both A and
> B because B conflicts with (the real package) A.

Okay, I can see how that works.

However, I don't see how the self-conflicts *hurts* anything, and some
people are currently using this technique, probably because it's easier to
remember to always have the Conflits.  So what are we gaining by adding a
check for this and making people change it?  Is there a problem here that
we're solving?  (Like, for instance, is this making dpkg or other package
tools more complicated in ways that getting rid of it would let us fix?)

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org)               <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>



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