Re: [PATCH] xserver-xorg: remove broken RREPLACES

[Phil Blundell <philb@gnu.org>]

On Fri, 2012-09-14 at 16:56 -0500, Mark Hatle wrote:
> On 9/14/12 4:50 PM, Phil Blundell wrote:
> > On Fri, 2012-09-14 at 18:29 +0100, Paul Eggleton wrote:
> >> Unfortunately with rpm at least, this results in xserver-xorg-module-exa
> >> being installed in preference to xserver-xorg when constructing the root
> >> filesystem, which is clearly not desirable.
> >
> > Surely this is a bug in the rpm packaging backend and ought to be fixed
> > there.
> 
> If a package "replaces" another, it has priority.  What is the desired behavior 
> in this case?

The conventional behaviour has been that:

- if a package RREPLACES another (without declaring any other
dependencies) then it is allowed to overwrite files in that package
without producing an error.  This is necessary when files move from one
package to another but both should remain installed.

- if a package wishes to entirely replace another one, it should both
RREPLACE and RCONFLICT with the old one in order to force it off.
Generally it would also want to RPROVIDE that package otherwise the
replacement is liable to cause broken dependencies.

p.