library package with conffile and SONAME?

[Philipp Hahn <pmhahn@pmhahn.de>]

Hello,

some library packages like "libtirpc1" (just my example here) contain a
conffile like "/etc/netconfig". Naturally they must conflict with their
successor "libtirpc3" as they contain the same file name. Currently it
does not: <https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=884029>

1. Either I could add the "Conflicts: libtirpc1" but that would render
the rename of the package following the SONAME change useless as they
will never be co-installed anyway then.

2. Or I could add a "Replaces: libtirpc1 (<< 0.2.5-1.2)" to silence dpkg
and allow libtirpc3 to overwrite that with which still has the same
format and content. This has the drawback that anyone later on
installing 1 after 3 will get the error from dpkg as 1 is not allowed to
replace the file from 3.

3. And/or I can create an additional package "libtirpc-common" to just
contain that single conffile and make "libtirpc[13]" both depend on it.
This last option is AFAIK frowned upon as it creates yet another package
for a single file.

So whats the current best practice?

Philipp