Re: Updating the policy for conflicting binaries names ? [was: Re: Re: New package netgen-lvs with binary /usr/bin/netgen - already taken]

[Martin Steigerwald <martin@lichtvoll.de>]

Sean Whitton - 08.09.18, 21:03:
> My understanding is that there are quite deep social reasons for the
> current policy (please note, though, that I was not involved in Debian
> when this piece of policy was created; neither was I involved during
> the nodejs TC decision).
> 
> The current policy protects maintainers and users of less popular
> packages from feeling that their package is less important in Debian,
> just because something else that is more popular comes along and
> happens to use the same name.
> 
> The current policy means that the discussion about which package
> should use the name begins on neutral ground, without prejudice
> against the less popular package.  By requiring that they both change
> their names if agreement cannot be reached, the maintainers put on
> equal footing.
> 
> To my mind, this is part of our attempt to be "the universal operating
> system".

I wonder about a mechanism similar to update-alternatives or divert and 
then warn the user on binary name clashes on installing a package and 
offering her to rename one or both. So he can decide whether to have 
that rust based fd or the fdclone based fd command as fd and the other 
one as some other name.

Of course that would break scripts that expect a certain name. But for 
one of the packages the binary name would change anyway, so that happens 
in either case. But still, letting to user choose would mean that 
different installations behave differently. But we have that with 
update-alternatives for certain binaries anyway already.

-- 
Martin