[gutsy] second dpkg error in one day

[Derek Broughton]

Samuel Thurston, III wrote:

> On 10/5/07, Derek Broughton <news at pointerstop.ca> wrote:
> 
>> aiui, these things generally happen because a file is being moved from
>> one
>> package to another.  The only way to prevent that is to update both
>> packages at exactly the same time.  Because of the nature of mirroring, I
>> shouldn't think it's possible to guarantee that that happens on the
>> mirrors
>> even if the developer could guarantee it on the initial site.  It's just
>> something you have to put up with if you use not-yet-released versions.
> 
> That would make sense, but the file in question in both cases were
> files that existed in the lib* package's file tree, and the main
> package was trying to overwrite it.  gimp-2.4 was trying to overwrite
> something in libgimp directory, and cupsys was trying to overwrite
> something in libcupsys.

I understand that - and it's always possible that they were actual bugs!

> But even given that there was good reason for this, provided that two
> packages were submitted at the same time to the repositories, wouldn't
> the mirrors replicate *both* packages and mitigate the conflict?

If you waited long enough, the mirrors would certainly replicate both
packages.  I just don't think you can ever really guarantee you won't see
exactly this sort of error.
-- 
derek