Re: installing two versions of a user application

[Celejar <celejar@gmail.com>]

On Fri, 23 Apr 2021 18:48:13 +0100
Morgan Read <mstuff@read.org.nz> wrote:

> On 23/04/2021 6:20 pm, Stefan Monnier wrote:
> > I suggest you look inside those .deb files: they seem to both name the
> > package they install `master-pdf-editor` but dpkg does not allow
> > installing different versions of a given package at the same time.
> > So you'll need to edit those `.deb` to change the package name from
> > `master-pdf-editor` to (say) `master-pdf-editor4` and
> > `master-pdf-editor5`, for example.
> 
> Thanks Stefan, I was wondering about something along those lines, but...
> Inside master-pdf-editor-4.3.89_qt5.x86_64.deb I find:
> data.tar.xz > /./opt/master-pdf-editor-4/masterpdfeditor4
>               /./usr/share/icons/hicolor/128x128/apps/masterpdfeditor4.png
>               /./usr/share/applications/masterpdfeditor4.desktop
> 
> And, inside master-pdf-editor-5.7.08-qt5_included.x86_64.deb I find:
> data.tar.xz > /./opt/master-pdf-editor-5/masterpdfeditor5.sh
>               /./opt/master-pdf-editor-5/masterpdfeditor5.png
>               /./opt/master-pdf-editor-5/masterpdfeditor5
>               /./usr/share/applications/masterpdfeditor5.desktop
>               /./usr/share/icons/hicolor/256x256/apps/masterpdfeditor5.png
> 
> So, everything looks fairly well distinguished - but, I know *nothing*
> about packaging...

You probably want to look inside the control archives rather than the
data archives:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deb_%28file_format%29

If both control archive files are using a package name of
"master-pdf-editor", you can try Stefan's suggestion of renaming one
and seeing if they'll then coinstall.

Celejar