Re: How to remove the relation between a file and a .deb package
Simon Richter <sjr@debian.org> writes:
> Hi,
>
> On Wed, Feb 03, 2010 at 03:44:54PM +0100, M. Frey wrote:
>
>> I got the Package A with the version 1.0 and 2.0. From version 2.0
>> on it's not necessary to keep track of the file fileB.txt. But I
>> want to keep fileB.txt on the target system anyway.
>
> This means that systems that never had version 1.0 installed will be
> different from systems that were upgraded. The point of having a package
> manager is to avoid precisely this situation.
>
> What is the actual use case? What does "fileB.txt" actually do so that
> this is desired?
>
>> Is there any key word in the control file? Or is there a special
>> file, which lists "dependencies to delete"?
>
> No, dpkg removes any files that are no longer part inside the tar file
> embedded in the package (i.e. the absence of the file in the new package
> is the trigger for its deletion).
The exception to this are conffiles, which remain behind if they were
modified by the user. And conffiles have a hole different set of rules
compared to normal files.
>> What happens if the same file is contained in two packages and one
>> of them gets removed?
>
> Then those two packages would have had an agreement on who provides that
> file (i.e. one of them declares a Replaces: relation on the other),
> otherwise it would not be possible to install both packages at the same
> time.
>
> Simon
MfG
Goswin
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