Bug#671507: debian-policy: policy section 7.4 conflicts with section 10.1

[Carsten Hey <carsten@debian.org>]

* Jonathan Nieder [2012-05-04 17:35 -0500]:
> Carsten Hey wrote:
> > * Patrick Ouellette [2012-05-04 13:38 -0400]:
>
> >> If you read the entire section 7.4 is seems entirely reasonable to
> >> create a package with an executable name that already exists in Debian
> >> with a package conflicts tag if the two executables have different
> >> functionality.
> >
> > But I want to play the boulder dash clone epiphany whilst browsing the
> > web using the epiphany browser!
>
> This misses the point.  The goal of policy §10.1 is that other
> packages (in Debian and elsewhere) can rely on a command name having a
> single, reliable meaning, independent of the $PATH setting and
> installed package set.

What you describe is one goal of §10.1's first paragraph, an other is
the one I hinted at, there is no reason to prohibit users to install two
unrelated programs that both use the same executable name upstream.

Due to support for partial upgrades, the situation that it is not clear
to a third package which program an executable name refers to (unless
package relation ship fields are used to circumvent this) is nothing new
in Debian and happend for example with epiphany.

Given that the affected maintainers are aware of it (for example they
know that "which command" would not lead to a useful result) and that
these situations are only temporary exceptions, then Debian is able to
handle such situations well as it did already in the past.

Carsten