Bug#180316: dpkg: won't remove fileutils even though coreutils provides fileutils

[Peter Cordes <peter@llama.nslug.ns.ca>]

Package: dpkg
Version: 1.9.21
Severity: normal

 background: coreutils contains all the binaries from shellutils, textutils,
and fileutils.  Version 4.5.6-1 of the latter three packages (same version #
as coreutils) only contain /usr/share/doc/<pkgname>, and have priority
"extra", instead of "required" like before, and like coreutils has now.
Thus, they should be removed once they are upgraded to the coreutils
version (but NOT before then...).

apt-cache show coreutils:
Package: coreutils
...
Replaces: textutils, shellutils, fileutils, stat
Provides: textutils, shellutils, fileutils
...

######## THE PROBLEM #######:
 dpkg ignores the provides: ..., fileutils from coreutils when deciding
whether it's ok to remove fileutils.  The versioned deps are all for version
numbers lower than coreutils' version number, so there shouldn't be a
problem.  Unfortunately, there is:

root@llama]~# dpkg --purge fileutils
dpkg: dependency problems prevent removal of fileutils:
 latex2html depends on fileutils (>= 4.0).
 debmake depends on fileutils (>= 3.16-4).
 debhelper depends on fileutils (>= 4.0-2.1).
 gnus depends on fileutils (>= 4.0); however:
  Package fileutils is to be removed.
 make depends on fileutils (>= 4.0).
 kernel-package depends on fileutils (>= 4.0); however:
  Package fileutils is to be removed.
dpkg: error processing fileutils (--purge):
 dependency problems - not removing
Errors were encountered while processing:
 fileutils
	    
root@llama]~# apt-get remove --purge fileutils
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  alien* alsa-source* build-essential* debhelper* debmake* devscripts*
  dpkg-dev* equivs* fileutils* free-java-sdk* gjdoc-native* gnus*
  kernel-package* latex2html* make* oo-browser* task-c-dev* task-devel-common*
WARNING: The following essential packages will be removed
This should NOT be done unless you know exactly what you are doing!
  fileutils 
0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 18 to remove and 5  not upgraded.
Need to get 0B of archives. After unpacking 33.0MB will be freed.
You are about to do something potentially harmful
To continue type in the phrase 'Yes, do as I say!'
 ?] n
Abort.
   

root@llama]~# dpkg -L fileutils
/.
/usr
/usr/share
/usr/share/doc
/usr/share/doc/fileutils
/usr/share/doc/fileutils/copyright
/usr/share/doc/fileutils/changelog.Debian.gz

root@llama]~# dpkg -l fileutils coreutils
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Installed/Config-files/Unpacked/Failed-config/Half-installed
|/ Err?=(none)/Hold/Reinst-required/X=both-problems (Status,Err:
uppercase=bad)
||/ Name           Version        Description
+++-==============-==============-============================================
pi  fileutils      4.5.6-1        GNU file management utilities
ii  coreutils      4.5.6-1        The GNU core utilities


 I had no trouble removing textutils or shellutils.  No packages I have
installed depend on them, AFAICT with apt-cache showpkg.

-- System Information
Debian Release: 3.0
Architecture: i386
Kernel: Linux llama.nslug.ns.ca 2.4.20-ac2preempt-gcc32 #5 Tue Jan 7 07:06:29 AST 2003 i686
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C

Versions of packages dpkg depends on:
ii  libc6                     2.3.1-11       GNU C Library: Shared libraries an
ii  libncurses5               5.3.20021109-2 Shared libraries for terminal hand
ii  libstdc++2.10-glibc2.2    1:2.95.4-15    The GNU stdc++ library