Re: Effect of Replaces in coexisting packages

[Frank Küster <frank@debian.org>]

Goswin von Brederlow <brederlo@informatik.uni-tuebingen.de> wrote:

> My suggestion would be to not replace files but to divert them. That
> is the only way for a file to be in 2 packages that can coexist.
> Replaces is realy only working right for moving a file from a to b.

Ralf, I guess you've noticed that.  Let me just add that I don't like
diversions;  some of the reasons are in bugs #272341 and #269235.  It
boils down to the problem that 

- the dvipdfm package diverted a file from tetex-bin

- we didn't know about this when we added Replaces/Provides: dvipdfm

- We have no way to get to know this in a systematic way - you have to
  check and understand the maintainer scripts of the package you
  Replace, or force yourself to check /var/lib/dpkg/diversions every
  time you have "file interactions" with an other package.  Or you learn
  it the hard way by getting bug reports like the above - but then it's
  too late.

Regards, Frank

-- 
Frank Küster
Inst. f. Biochemie der Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer