BitTorrent package conflicts

[Reinhard Tartler]

On Tue, Jul 25, 2006 at 04:18:11PM -0700, Steven Hazel wrote:
> >Steven Hazel wrote:
> >> Okay.  At first blush, it looks like these license problems are
> >> fairly superficial -- I'll bring it up around here and see whether
> >> we can get them resolved.

> >That would be really great. If that happens, we can fix the package
> >directly in place when some transition or other changes to dependencies
> >happen.
> 
> 
> We've got someone writing this up for our lawyers now, so hopefully this
> will work out.

Thank you for your effords on this issue!

> >I didn't really get the problem, if your package installs files, which
> >are are provided by other packages, you have to add a 'Conflicts:'. If
> >you want to provide 'upgrade' packages for ubuntu users, just keep the
> >package name 'bittorrent', so the ubuntu package gets upgraded. Note
> >that this is likely to break the system of your users when they upgrade
> >to the next ubuntu release.
> >
> >Can you perhaps be more verbose on what you are actually trying and what
> >actually breaks?
> 
> 
> Here's the issue:
> 
> My bittorrent 4 package conflicts with the older bittorrent 3 package.  It
> has to, because both packages install files with the same names under
> /usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/BitTorrent.  No problem so far, just
> uninstall the old version of bittorrent to get the new one.

Ah, now I see. I think the easiest way would be to install BitTorrent4
in /usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/BitTorrent4, so you don't need to
conflict against the older package.

> Another package, gnome-btdownload, requires bittorrent 3.  It uses some of
> the bittorrent 3 files from /usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/BitTorrent as a
> library, and that interface is not preserved in bittorrent 4, so this is a
> legitimate requirement.  All that would be fine -- users could chose
> to remove bittorrent 3 and gnome-btdownload and install bittorrent 4
> instead.

Do I understand correctly that this would mean that users had to do
without gnome-bittorrent? 

> But, ubuntu-desktop requires gnome-btdownload.  So now users have to chose
> between bittorrent 4, and the Task package that keeps their whole ubuntu
> desktop install updating properly.

Removing the task package can and will cause trouble with upgrading to
the next version of ubuntu.

I think the easiest solution would be to remove the conflict, and
install the 2 packages in paralell.

If this should not be feasible, then its getting more nasty: you could
perhaps provide an updated gnome-btdownload package, which ideally would
work with bittorrent4, or (least ideally) be empty, and would just
satisfy the ubuntu-desktop dependencies.

Gruesse,
	Reinhard