Re: Debian packages (maybe stupid) question
On Apr 10, 9:04pm, Bruce Perens wrote:
} > will the package installation tools tolerate such duplicates
}
} If the package maintainer sets a flag "Replaces: other-package-name" in
} the package header, it will allow one or more files of the other package
} to be replaced.
But this means one does know which other packages do provide the file(s),
which may be impossible because packages released later may provide
these files, making impossible to install the first package after them
(supposing it has been deinstalled or simply not installed in the first
place) without a conflict.
That's why I think managing a count of shared files (or simply looking
at all packages lists of files when removing one, as a first step; I
prefer to have packages uninstalled slowly but with this problem taken
into account) should be the task of the packaging system.
} We mark _packages_ "Essential" now. We don't do this with file granularity
} in general, although there have been experiments in this direction.
It would really be nice, IMHO.
} Not in the way you describe. It would be the package maintainer's
} responsibility to compress man pages (which is something we might do).
Sure, but this is not as nice. It means that if someone installs a
package which compresses its man pages (for example by looking if some
compressed man pages already exist and taking that fact as an indication
that the man command support compressed man pages, which is what I do
for tools I've written) and that the name of the compressed file is
recorded in the bill of material (or whatever the correct name for
Debian packages, I don't remember) of the package, then the system
administrator does not have a chance to replace its actual man system by
one that provides different features but not compression support: if
she uncompresses all man pages for the new man system to be able to
use them, the packages will be marked as incomplete because some files
will appear to be missing? Or I am completely wrong?
} Please read the package developer's documentation and take a good look
} at the "dpkg" program and the scripts used to build a package. We have
} addressed some of the issues you are concerned with.
I did that first (though I didn't get the hello example, because I don't
have a Debian system yet). BTW, the doc. references a readme.DEBIAN file
saying `add to the readme.DEBIAN file described above' but there's no
reference to this file and its contents prior to this sentence (I got
the PS doc two weeks ago, maybe this has been corrected).
YA.
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