How to change a symlink without breaking anything (problems with g++)

[Morten Eriksen <mortene@sim.no>]

Hi,

this is probably a newbie question, but I didn't see it covered in any
of the FAQs or HOW-TOs I found at debian.org/docs/ (and the list
search facilities seems quite sloppy, and I had no luck there either):

What is the correct manner of changing a symlink file belonging to a
Debian package? Is it sufficient to just rm and re-link, or should I
use any of the package-handling tools?

(In case someone is interested, I'm asking because I just stumbled
over a surprising issue with the g++ packages: doing an

       # apt-get install g++

installed g++-3.3 (I was expecting just an upgrade to the previously
installed g++-2.95), and made /usr/bin/g++ into a symlink pointing to
it. Just switching g++ versions like this is bound to cause mayhem for
all development against any C++ libraries on the system already
compiled with g++ v2.95, so I'm surprised that this happens just like
that from the "testing" branch..? Removing the g++-3.3 package doesn't
work either, as apt-get seems to now refuse to remove or install
_either_ g++-2.95 or g++-3.3 -- it insists on having both? Weird.)

~# Morten