Hello, I know this is a standard szenario, but the natural solution conflicts with suggestions in policy.
When jumping from 4.3 to 4.5 I'd like to rename pgrep to pcregrep and to provide seamless upgrades I'd introduce a dummy package pgrep depending on pcregrep, however replaces/conflicts gives me a headache. Package: pcregrep Architecture: any Depends: ${shlibs:Depends} Conflicts: pgrep(<<4.5) Replaces: pgrep(<<4.5) Package: pgrep Section: oldlibs Architecture: all Depends: pcregrep This looks correct, doesn't it? Any[1] version of pgrep fulfilling (<<4.5) is no dummy package and contains /usr/bin/pcregrep, therefore pcregrep must conflict with it. (Testing shows that this seems to work, "apt-get dselect-upgrade" and "apt-get dist-upgrade" will install pcregrep.) However policy 7.3 says: | A Conflicts entry should almost never have an "earlier than" | version clause. This would prevent dpkg from upgrading or | installing the package which declared such a conflict until | the upgrade or removal of the conflicted-with package had been | completed. My gut feeling tells me to ignore this because I _need_ to conflict with pgrep(<<4.5) and because high-level packaging managment tools like apt or dselect handle this quite fine. cu andreas [1] Actually it is any version from 3.3-1 up to the version currently available, 4.3-4, but I've no idea how to express a range in replaces/conflicts except by listing all of them, there is no AND. -- "See, I told you they'd listen to Reason," [SPOILER] Svfurlr fnlf, fuhggvat qbja gur juveyvat tha. Neal Stephenson in "Snow Crash" -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]