Package: dpkg Version: 1.10.15 Dpkg aborts at every sign of a package trying to overwrite other packages's files. But this is happening a lot now with kde packages (I'm using CVS HEAD builds from an external source, but a friend of mine just had a problem with packages from unstable), in which it seems that icons are transitioning from applications packages to kdelibs-data. Thus, a simple upgrade (I'm running unstable) screws apt very bad because kdelibs-data tries to upgrade an icon file which is also on another package, and dpkg just aborts, leaving some packages unconfigured, and apt unusable. The only solution is to dpkg --purge the application to let the kdelibs-data upgrade resume. It is very exaggerated to leave the system in an unusable state just because of some icons.
I suggest that dpkg be a bit more tolerant to these file overwrites: It should just popup a message (in the style of the one that pops when some pkg tries to overwrite modified configuration files, but showing only date/size of the files, as the content could not be meaningful) asking if you want to keep the old, install the new, or install to a different filename. Of course, this _should_ not happen, and package maintainers should not rely on this feature, but this could help a lot with buggy/transitional/experimental packages... Just to be sure, this message should suggest filing a bug against the affected packages...
