Skeletal packaging?

["Peter" <peter@nicker.net>]

Hi folks,

This is something that's bugged me for a while and I'm sure there must be a
way to do it...  Basically, there are lots of cases where I remove packages
that other packages depend on when I replace them with an alternative I have
compiled myself.

One example of this is qmail.  I removed exim on Debian 2.2 and replaced it
with qmail which I compiled myself from sources.  Lots of stuff depends on
mail-transport-agent and I can't use dselect to get other packages or do
updates once this is broken since when I tell it to do the install it checks
the dependencies and removes all the software that depends on the
mail-transport-agent (bad).

Does anyone have any simple instructions or suggestions on how to create a
fake debian package that claims it provides mail-transport-agent?  Or
another easy solution?  Some way to tell it that it doesn't need
mail-transport-agent?

Thanks for the help,
Peter McLachlan


**************************************************************************

This was a Golden Age, a time of high adventure, rich living, and hard
dying... but nobody thought so. This was a future of fortune and theft,
pillage and rapine, culture and vice... but nobody admitted it.
                -- Alfred Bester, "The Stars My Destination"

**************************************************************************