Re: [Fink-devel] Should package put itself in conflicts?

[Daniel M. <dm...@ne...>]

On Thu, Sep 27, 2007 at 11:54:21AM +1200, Philip Lamb wrote:
> Hi all, one more question which is ambiguous in the docs: The  
> documentation states "If a package is listed in its own Conflicts, it  
> will be (silently) removed from that list".

What's ambiguous about that? If you list it, fink removes it (or at
least that's what we think fink does:). To see this in action, try
listing a package as its own Conflicts, 'fink rebuild' the package,
and then 'dpkg-deb -I' the .deb of that compiled package to see how
fink processed that Conflicts line.

> However, many packages DO seem to put themselves into the Conflicts:  
> field. E.g. version 1.0.1 of package foo might list Conflicts: foo (<  
> 1.0.1-1). This would seem to be redundant, since the upgrading of a  
> package would naturally remove the older version.

I agree that that usage is redundant. Do any packages actually do that
(other than variants, which often list all variants including self, as
akh described)?

> So, under what circumstances should a package list itself on the  
> Conflicts: line?

You never need to. You might find it easier in some cases. Listing it
is a harmless no-op because "it will be [...] removed".

dan

-- 
Daniel Macks
dm...@ne...
http://www.netspace.org/~dmacks