Hi!
While trying to set up a group of packages to be mutually-exclusive, I've come across what I think is a bug in dpkg. First, some background: I'm using dpkg 1.9.17 on Mac OS X (a.k.a. Darwin) in the Fink project (http://fink.sourceforge.net). Fink has its own source package format, but uses dpkg to install binary .deb packages (and dpkg-deb to create them). I can provide the complete set of patches used as well as example .deb packages if requested.
The Debian Policy Manual (version 3.5.6.0 from 2001-07-24) mentions in section 7.5.2 that alternative and mutually-exclusive packages can be set up using a virtual package name and gives the following example:
Provides: mail-transport-agent Conflicts: mail-transport-agent Replaces: mail-transport-agent
Unfortunately, I can't get this to work with dpkg 1.9.17. To isolate the problem, I made two packages, test-a and test-b, that both contain these declarations:
Provides: test-c Conflicts: test-c Replaces: test-c
When test-a is installed, the expectation is that I can run 'dpkg -i test-b_....deb' and it will remove test-a in favor of test-b. (This actually works when only real package names are used for Conflicts and Replaces.) However, with the above I get this:
[...]
dpkg: regarding .../test-b_1.0-1_darwin-powerpc.deb containing test-b:
test-a conflicts with test-c
test-b provides test-c and is to be installed.
dpkg: error processing /sw/fink/dists/local/main/binary-darwin-powerpc/test-b_1.0-1_darwin-powerpc.deb (--install):
conflicting packages - not installing test-b
[...]
So somehow dpkg doesn't evaluate the Replaces field correctly in this case. Is this a bug? Or am I missing something important and it's actually a feature? Could it be related to something obscure, such as the ordering of the fields in the control file?
Any help is appreciated.
-chrisp
-- chrisp a.k.a. Christoph Pfisterer "Any sufficiently advanced [EMAIL PROTECTED] - http://chrisp.de bug is indistinguishable PGP key & geek code available from a feature."
