Re: [Debian-med-packaging] Bug#503367: plink: file conflict with putty-tools
Teodor <mteodor@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 25, 2008 at 6:21 PM, Charles Plessy <plessy@debian.org> wrote:
>> Le Sat, Oct 25, 2008 at 06:07:11PM +0300, Teodor a écrit :
>>> IMO a simple "Conflicts: putty-tools" is enough. If they provide the
>>> same functionality than an "alternative" is better than conflicting
>>> with each other.
>>
>> Hello Tedor,
>>
>> thanks for the feedback, but this would be against our Policy, because the two
>> files competing for the same name do not provide the same functionality:
>
> Yes, it seems to be the case. I'm a newcomer to Debian but IMO this
> restriction about "Conflicts" in s10.1 seems a little unpractical.
No, on the contrary: It would be very unpractical for users if they had
to decide whether they want to do genetic analysis *or* use putty. Let
alone admins on multi-user systems.
> The
> "Conflicts" section of the policy [1] does not specify anything about
> the restriction of packages that should conflict on each other *only*
> if they provide the same functionality. The *alternative* mechanism is
> the most natural way to handle the conflicts between packages that
> provide the same functionality. Otherwise, the "Conflicts" directive
> could help for packages that doesn't provide the same functionality.
No, if the functionality is different, it should be possible to install
and use both at the same time. Conflicts are useful if a package takes
over files from an other one, or if the maintainers decide that you need
to make a choice (e.g. each package providing mail-transport-agent
installs /usr/sbin/sendmail and conflicts with the others, because using
alternatives would probably lead to madness).
Regards, Frank
--
Frank Küster
Debian Developer (TeXLive)
ADFC Miltenberg
B90/Grüne KV Miltenberg
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