Re: Conflicting package names
Pablo Lorenzzoni wrote...
> How should I proceed?
I suggest not to spend any time on this. Mostly since the old
conquest's upstream[0] isn't dead, unlike stated in #591487. This just
might have changed in the meantime. But now, if ever anyone brings the
old "conquest" back into Debian but you have taken the name in
meantime, expect a lot of disturbance.
In general and assuming upstream was dead, buried and forgotten: If
you want to re-use the source name, you might confuse pts and security
tracker, and this should better be discussed with all parties involved
beforehand. I think they can handle this after such a long time, but
since the source name is barely visible to the end-user, why start the
fuss?
If you want to re-use any binary name, keep in mind some users still
might have installed the old package, that causes a few problems:
Co-existence is not possible, but according to Murphy one users wishes
to have both, bad. If your version number is lower and users actually
wish to install your package and kick the old one (not very likely I
admit), they will - from a technical point of view - have to
downgrade, or remove the old package first, not good.
If I'd really want to re-use a binary name, although I cannot see why
I should, I'd assert my version is higher, using epoch if required,
and add a come-from version check to preinst, alerting if applicable
that something potentially unwanted is going to happen, and offer to
abort the upgrade.
This has been done, I don't know to which extend, a few years ago when
the "git" package's meaning changed to the version control system from
"gnome interactive tool". But, honestly, git is a completely different
league. So, for your package, it's not worth the efforts.
Additionally, the long name might be a bit unwieldy but also prevents
users from mistaking it for the other "conquest" package.
In the long run, this will create problems in the package name space.
I have some ideas how to deal with that issue, mostly be adding a new
package interdependency. But that will not happen any time soon.
Christoph
[0] http://www.radscan.com/conquest.html
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