Bug#36220: apt breaks when files already exist

[Ariel Tankus <arielt@math.tau.ac.il>]

Package: apt
Version: 0.1.8


Following is a bug report for apt-get.

System:  Hamm 2.0 Beta upgraded to Slink.
Machine: Pentium-II 233Mhz

Due to lack of .deb files for gnome-1.0 I've installed
RPMs of gnome-1.0, debianized by `alien' on my Hamm Beta.

Following the upgrade to Slink, apt-get failed to install
various packages, among them freetype2 (for example).
There was no error message.  When attempting to install
the package (e.g, freetype2), gzip would return exit status 1,
which in turn fails dpkg, which fails apt-get.

I ran dpkg --purge for each debianized package of gnome-1.0.
This solved the problem with apt-get.  I then tested whether
there are files installed by the debianized RPMs of gnome-1.0
which also appear in other (original) Debian packages.
The result of this search is enclosed:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
dpkg: /usr/doc/freetype/changelog.Debian.gz not found.
dpkg: /usr/doc/freetype/copyright not found.
libgtk-dev: /usr/lib/glib/include/glibconfig.h
freetype2: /usr/share/locale/cs/LC_MESSAGES/freetype.mo
freetype2: /usr/share/locale/nl/LC_MESSAGES/freetype.mo
freetype2: /usr/share/locale/fr/LC_MESSAGES/freetype.mo
freetype2: /usr/share/locale/de/LC_MESSAGES/freetype.mo
freetype2: /usr/share/locale/es/LC_MESSAGES/freetype.mo
libgtk1: /usr/lib/libglib.so.1.0.6
libgtk-dev: /usr/include/glib.h
libgtk1: /usr/lib/libgdk.so.1.0.6
libgtk-dev: /usr/lib/libglib.a
libgtk1: /usr/lib/libgtk.so.1.0.6
dpkg: /usr/lib/libttf.so.2 not found.
libgtk-dev: /usr/lib/libglib.so
libgtk1: /usr/lib/libglib.so.1
libgtk1: /usr/lib/libgdk.so.1
libgtk1: /usr/lib/libgtk.so.1
imlib1: /usr/lib/libImlib.so.1
gdk-imlib1: /usr/lib/libgdk_imlib.so.1
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
This list was created by:
---
#!/bin/csh -f

echo -n '' >! c

foreach i ( `cat b` )
    if (-f /$i) dpkg --search /$i >>& c
end
---
where file `b' contains the output of dpkg --contents 
on all debianized packages (which are already de-installed
at the time this is performed).

The problem with apt-get is that there is no indication
that the failure is due to files which are already installed
by another package.  This made me spend lots of time before
I understood that gnome-1.0 was the origin of the problem,
as freetype2 (for e.g.) has appeared as a dependency of another
package I tried to install (`moonlight', in Slink) which had
nothing to do with gnome-1.0.



	-- Ariel.

---
Ariel Tankus
Department of Computer Science
Tel-Aviv University
arielt@math.tau.ac.il