Bug#578852: debian-policy: prohibit usage of Breaks for file conflicts
Package: debian-policy
Version: 3.8.4.0
Severity: normal
>From Debian policy, paragraph 7.3:
-8<-
If the breaking package also overwrites some files from the older
package, it should use Replaces (not Conflicts) to ensure this goes
smoothly.
->8-
This phrase does not fits well with the 7.4 paragraph:
-8<-
When one binary package declares a conflict with another using a
Conflicts field, dpkg will refuse to allow them to be installed on the
system at the same time.
->8-
Package with file conflicts should use Conflicts, not Breaks if they
overwrite some files in another package, because they are not allowed to
be unpacked at the same time, contrary to the Breaks case whey they are
not allowed to be configured at the same time. Otherwise it will be able
to lead to file overwrites in case of downgrading the "breaking"
package.
Also, generally, this phrase makes impossible for high-level package
manager to know if two packages, one of which breaks another, have
conflicting files or no, which has impact of generating sequence of dpkg
calls when dependencies is so tight that high-level package manager
should break some dependencies temporarily. Plus, I don't see the
rationale why Breaks+Replaces should be used instead of
Conflicts+Replaces - with that setup upgrade also goes smoothly.
-- System Information:
Debian Release: squeeze/sid
APT prefers unstable
APT policy: (990, 'unstable'), (900, 'testing'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Kernel: Linux 2.6.32-trunk-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
debian-policy depends on no packages.
debian-policy recommends no packages.
Versions of packages debian-policy suggests:
pn doc-base <none> (no description available)
-- no debconf information
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