Re: Automatically detecting package file conflicts without dependency conflicts?

[Josh Triplett <josh@joshtriplett.org>]

Steve Langasek wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 25, 2015 at 05:28:35PM -0800, Josh Triplett wrote:
> > Bugs like 806253 come up fairly regularly in unstable: two packages
> > contain the same file, but don't have a Conflicts or Replaces
> > relationship.  Renamed packages seem like the most common case, though
> > this can happen other ways as well.
> 
> > The archive software already does a variety of checks on packages before
> > accepting them into the archive.  Do we have enough data and metadata
> > available that the archive software could automatically reject uploads
> > of .deb files that contain the same file path as another package without
> > a Conflicts or Replaces expressed against that package?
> 
> No, because packages can divert files belonging to other packages, in which
> case no conflict is required; and diversions happen via maintainer scripts,
> so correctly detecting them is non-trivial.

Ah, fair enough.  Yet another reason to dislike maintainer scripts.

Hopefully we can move to purely declarative diversions at some point, at
which point this kind of analysis might become feasible.

- Josh Triplett