Conflicting filenames in upstream packages

[Toshio Kuratomi]

James Westby wrote:
> On Mon, 2008-08-04 at 09:41 -0700, Toshio Kuratomi wrote:
>> How do other distributions deal with conflicting filenames in upstream 
>> packages?  For instance, in Fedora we have coda-client and coq packaged. 
>>   They both provide /usr/bin/parser.
> 
> Hey,
> 
> Debian (and by extension Ubuntu) has the same attitude it seems.
> 
> There are a couple of approaches you can use
> 
>   * Alternatives, if both /usr/bin/parser were command 
>     line compatible implementations of the same thing then they
>     can use "alternatives" to make themselves co-installable and
>     let the administrator choose which /usr/bin/parser
>     invokes. Think java compilers.
> 
>   * Conflicts, if the two packages are not meant to be installed
>     together then a conflicts is appropriate. However, shipping
>     the same filename isn't a good enough reason on it's own.
>     If the two packages are unrelated and just have a filename
>     clash you are not supposed to conflict.
> 
>   * Renaming, as you said, if there is no other choice then
>     one or the other must rename the file.
> 
> I realise that's more than you asked for, but you might be interested
> in the policies behind it as well as the end result.
> 
Very!  Your explanation seems like a more succinct version of what we 
have in our guidelines::
   http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging/Conflicts#Conflicting_Files

We have lots of examples but you've boiled it down into something more 
structured.

>> If other distros have a policy of name changing, it would be nice to 
>> start a list of packages that we're doing renames to so that we could at 
>> least have consistency between ourselves.
> 
> That would be an interesting idea, and a good use for the wiki I expect.
> 
> I don't imagine there is a better way of finding existing cases
> than asking developers where they know of any?
> 
Yeah.  While there are files conflicting it's easy to tell which 
packages have issues.  Once we resolve the problem, there's no automated 
way to detect that the issue existed.

-Toshio

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