On Wed, Jul 11, 2012 at 07:18:43PM +0000, Bart Martens wrote: > On Wed, Jul 11, 2012 at 07:07:49PM +0200, Sven Joachim wrote: > > On 2012-07-11 18:53 +0200, Bart Martens wrote: > > > In my opinion, regardless of the order in which these two packages are > > > installed, dpkg should fail to install the second package, with an error > > > message about /usr/include/tcl. > > > > Policy (ยง6.6) actually documents this behavior: > > > > A directory will never be replaced by a symbolic link to a > > directory or vice versa; instead, the existing state (symlink or > > not) will be left alone > > OK. > > > and `dpkg' will follow the symlink if there is one. > > I'm not convinced that this is a good choice. Do you know where this choice > comes from ?
Please have a look at this scenario : apt-get -y -t stable install tcl-dev apt-get -y -t stable install tk-tile apt-get -y -t unstable install tcl-dev The first and second commands succeed. The third command fails with this : Unpacking replacement tcl-dev ... dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/tcl-dev_8.5.0-2_all.deb (--unpack): trying to overwrite '/usr/include/tcl', which is also in package tk-tile 0.8.2-2.1 Preparing to replace tcl 8.4.16-2 (using .../archives/tcl_8.5.0-2_all.deb) ... update-alternatives: using /usr/bin/tclsh8.4 to provide /usr/bin/tclsh (tclsh) in auto mode Unpacking replacement tcl ... Errors were encountered while processing: /var/cache/apt/archives/tcl-dev_8.5.0-2_all.deb E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1) So dpkg has initially installed /usr/include/tcl as a symbolic link, next dpkg has tolerated the installation of tk-tile owning /usr/include/tcl as a directory, and finally dpkg fails to upgrade the symbolic link because tk-tile owns /usr/include/tcl as a directory. Obviously dpkg should successfully upgrade the symbolic link. The solution is, in my opinion, that dpkg fails to install the package owning /usr/include/tcl as a directory when /usr/include/tcl is already installed as a symbolic link. Then there is no problem with upgrading the symbolic link. But I'm still interested to know more about "changing it would break quite a few things", see earlier on the bug report. Regards, Bart Martens -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected]
